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Q1 2017 Market Review & Outlook
Morgan Creek Capital Management
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Q 1 2 0 1 7 Market Review & Outlook
Table of Contents
Letter to Fellow Investors
3
First Quarter Review
23
Market Outlook
58
Update on Morgan Creek
86
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Letter to Fellow Investors
Not So Intelligent Investors: #GravityRules
Source(s): Newbostonhistoricalsociety.com, Businessindsider.com, CFAInstitute.com, Wikipedia.com
The protagonist of our letter last quarter was Roger Babson, the acclaimed entrepreneur, investor and
philanthropist, who was the first financial forecaster to call the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent economic
Depression. Babson reluctantly attended MIT and studied Engineering. His reluctance came from his belief that
University instruction “was given to what had already been accomplished, rather than to anticipating future
possibilities.” The one thing he did value from his time at MIT was his study of the British scientist and
mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton, and, in particular, his Third Law of Motion that states, “For every action there is
an equal and opposite reaction” and his discovery of the laws of gravity. In addition to Newton, Babson was
inspired by the book Brenner’s Prophecies of Future Ups and Downs In Prices, written in 1884 by Samuel Brenner
(described on the title page as “an Ohio Farmer”) that laid out a cyclical model for the variation in commodities
prices (that has been astonishingly accurate over the past century in identifying market peaks and troughs).
Babson was particularly struck by a quote from the book that he linked to the Newtonian constructs of action and
reaction and gravity, “There is a time in the price of certain products and commodities, which if taken by men at
the advance lead on to fortune, but if taken on the decline leads to bankruptcy and ruin.” Babson concluded that
prices could deviate from their normal levels only for so long before the law of gravity would bring them back to
earth. Babson was so intrigued by Newton and his theories that he titled his own autobiography, Actions and
Reactions, and he incorporated Newton’s Third Law into all of his inventions and business endeavors. One such
invention was a proprietary economic assessment technique called the “Babsonchart,” which became famous when
he used it to predict the Great Crash in September of 1929. Later in life, Babson became somewhat obsessed with
gravity and even penned an essay titled Gravity - Our Enemy Number One, where he stated that his desire to find a
way to overcome gravity was catalyzed by the childhood drowning of his sister. He described the event, saying
“she was unable to fight gravity, which came up and seized her like a dragon and brought her to the bottom, where
she suffocated from lack of oxygen.” Babson was convinced that “old man Gravity” was directly responsible
millions of accidents and deaths each year, directly due to the people's inability to counteract gravity at a critical
moment. The breaking point came in 1947 when Babson’s grandson tragically drowned and he became completely
obsessed with “the weakest fundamental force.” While an average eccentric might be content to wallow in selfpity, Babson was a man of action and he reacted in the only way he knew how, as an entrepreneur and a
businessman. He hated gravity so he decided to do something to attempt to get rid of it.
Babson established the Gravity Research Foundation in 1948, ostensibly to study gravity and to sponsor research
that might help people learn to combat the forces of gravity, specifically to discover a means of implementing what
Babson referred to as gravitational shielding (he envisioned a sort of suit someone could wear to counteract
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gravity, particularly when swimming). The Foundation also ran conferences, like the one highlighted in the picture
above, that would bring together thought leaders in the field of gravity and investments. A curious aside, the
Foundation’s headquarters was established in New Boston, New Hampshire, which Babson chose for a very
interesting reason, he believed that New Boston was far enough away from the major metropolitan cities that it
might survive a nuclear war if WW III were to commence (interesting that talk of WW III has arisen again
recently) and created a tourist destination as the Gravity Center of the World. As part of the Foundation
operations he also bought Invention Incorporated, which seconded three full-time investigators to the U.S. Patent
Office to sort through all incoming patent proposals with a mission “to constantly be on the watch for any
machine, alloy, chemical or formula which directly relates to the harnessing of gravity.” Babson believed that a
gravity harness, in the form of a metal alloy that would act as a partial insulator, could lead to the development of a
conductor (like a waterwheel) that would harness the natural waves of gravity and create a perpetual motion
machine. Babson believed that harness could solve the world’s dependence on non-renewable fuels and would be
“a great blessing to mankind” (again, an interesting parallel to today’s energy market discussions). The Foundation
sponsored an annual contest for scientific researchers to submit essays on topics related to gravity. Though the
contest awarded cash prizes of $500 to $4,000, a seemingly small sum, the contest has had a very material impact
on the field of study and the contest has been won by a number of people who later went on to win the Nobel Prize
in physics (for example, Stephen Hawking, who has won six times, George Smoot, Gerardus t’Hooft and Bryce
DeWitt). Steve Carlip, a UC Davis physicist whose essay won in 2007 was quoted on the impact of the contest,
saying “it encourages people working in the field to step back a little and give a broader overview of their research
and it is nearly universally known among people working in gravitational theory.” Unfortunately, the Foundation
ceased activity after Babson’s death in 1967, but the contest continues to this day and is run by George Rideout, Jr.,
the son of Babson’s business partner. Historians have written that the contest forever changed the field of
gravitational research and has reinvigorated the age-old quest to understand gravity. Roger Babson would be
disappointed to know that there still is no gravitational shielding device (although we will discuss later how
investors may beg to differ), but he would be pleased that the interest in gravity has been renewed and maintained
(well, at least in the scientific realm, if not in the investment world…more on this later).
Roger Babson would probably wholeheartedly agree with two statements from Investopedia. “Serious physicists
read about Sir Isaac Newton to learn his teachings about gravity and motion. Serious investors read Benjamin
Graham’s work to learn about finance and investments.” It turns out Babson was not the only person to have an
interest in Sir Isaac. In an updated and annotated version of Benjamin Graham's 1947 classic The Intelligent
Investor (called “The best book about investing ever written” by Warren Buffett), Jason Zweig of the Wall Street
Journal included an anecdote in the Foreword of the Revised Edition (issued in 2003) about Newton’s adventures
(or should we say misadventures) with investing in the South Sea Company. The South Sea Company was a
unique “business.” Founded in 1711, the company was promised a monopoly on trade with South Sea colonies
(South America) by the British government in exchange for assuming the government debt accumulated during
the War of Spanish Succession. The Company listed on the British stock exchange and began trading in 1718.
Investors were lured to invest by the idea that the Spanish colonies in the South Seas were willing to trade jewels
and gold for wool and fleece (like Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold). In January 1720, when the company’s
shares stood at £128, the Directors discovered that the trade concessions were less valuable than hoped, they
circulated false claims of success in the colonies and spun yarns of South Sea riches, pumping the shares to £175 by
February. Using a modern lens (as the term was not invented until 1929), the South Sea Company represented a
giant Ponzi Scheme (similar to Bernie Madoff) in that the company proposed to pay dividends not from profits but
from sales of new shares for cash (sounds a little like Tesla here…). Our protagonist, Sir Isaac, enters the story here
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when he invested around £3,500 (about $800k today). In March, the company convinced the government to allow
it to assume more of the national debt in exchange for its shares (sounds a little like QE here…), ironically beating
a rival proposal from the Bank of England (they would get their chance to buy overvalued assets later). As investor
confidence mounted (and the mania began to grow) Newton sold out in late April at around £350, having doubled
his money to £7,000 (intelligent trade). If the story ended there, we wouldn't have a theme for our letter.
The South Sea Company was not the only speculative venture being offered at the time, as there was a flurry of
speculation in the British stock market. Richard Dale points out in his book The First Crash: Lessons from the
South Sea Bubble, “Life expectancy in 18th Century England was just 21 years old, owing to smallpox, typhus and
other killer diseases, and an endless variety of wars. Who needed a long-term investment plan when no one ever
reached retirement age? A career committed to the laborious acquisition of wealth over time was perhaps less
appealing than taking a chance on some get-rich-quick commercial venture.” Newly floated firms were springing
forth like tulips and 1720 actually became known as the “bubble year” when in June, Parliament (at the urging of
the South Sea Company) passed the Bubble Act requiring all shareholder-owned companies to receive a Royal
Charter. The South Sea Company received its Charter, a perceived vote of confidence from the government (as
opposed to an anti-competitive device acquired through lobbying), and the price began to rocket higher. As the
shares began soaring, they were pumped up by rumors spreading as investors had to rely on coffee-shop
“grapevines” and the press for share price information. The biggest problem was that the press was interviewing
the coffee-shop gossipers so the bubble became reflexive, feeding on itself as it grew (sounds familiar…). Newton
had cashed in his stake for a very nice profit, but he watched with anguish, as his friends who had stayed invested
were “getting rich,” so he dove back in at twice the price he had exited and this time invested his entire life savings
of £20,000 (about $4.5 million today) at £700 a share. In the words of Lord Overstone, “no warning on earth can
save people determined to grow suddenly rich.” As the dog days of summer approached, the shares went vertical
and the mania turned to a delusional, speculative frenzy as investors from all walks of life begged, borrowed and
stole to get money to invest in the South Sea Company. The share price quickly rose toward £900, which prompted
some investors to sell, but the company instructed their agents to buy the shares to support the price and the shares
surged to £1,050. The bubble finally burst in September (as all Bubbles are prone to do; interesting that it seems to
always happen in the fall) and by mid-October South Sea shares had quickly tumbled back to their January price.
One thing to keep in mind is that all of this activity was for a company that wasn’t profitable (no prospects for
profits either, again sounds like Tesla) and, worse still, its trading activities (only source of potential revenue) had
been suspended. The South Sea Company didn’t go bankrupt in the modern sense, but rather suffered a liquidity
crisis because it was spending so much money to support the share price (sounds really familiar…). Given the ties
to the government, it eventually had to be bailed out (again familiar) through a combination of debt forgiveness
and liquidity injections by the Bank of England (history rhymes).
Sir Isaac had finally had enough and he exited in October and November, losing nearly his entire life savings and
prompting him to famously quip “I can calculate the movement of stars, but not the madness of men.” It is said
that for the rest of his days he forbade anyone to utter the words South Sea in his presence. We can learn a lot
about human nature observing the scientist responsible for the law of gravity being sucked into a speculative foray
that for a time seemed to defy gravity (in the end, Gravity Rules). Greed is an amazing phenomenon, clouding the
judgment of even one of the smartest people on the planet. The perilous journey of the inventor or calculus into
the South Sea Company is a reminder of how even the most intelligent people can be transformed into not so
intelligent investors when they allow the irrationality of the crowd to overwhelm their reason. Graham described
this phenomenon saying, “Even the intelligent investor is likely to need considerable willpower to keep from
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following the crowd. For indeed, the investor's chief problem, and even his worst enemy, is likely to be
himself. Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment
process.” One of the most disconcerting parts of these stories is how the participants find ways to rationalize their
behavior. John Martin, a prominent banker in Newton’s day who also lost a lot of money in the South Sea
Company, was quoted as saying, “When the rest of the world are mad we must imitate them in some measure.”
Similarly, during the Global Financial Crisis it was Chuck Prince (former CEO of Citigroup) who said a month
before the collapse, “As long as the music’s playing, you’ve got to get up and dance, and we’re still dancing.” We
would argue that you don't. You can believe that gravity exists and choose not to chase the bubble and destroy
your wealth. Investors have been looking for the easy way to get rich for centuries and they have been chasing
bubbles since the travails of Sir Isaac in the 1720. The South Sea Company was one of the greatest investment
bubbles in history. In fact, it was the first time that the word “bubble” was used to describe a speculative run and
subsequent crash in an asset. Sir Isaac taught us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction and the
bigger the speculative excess, the worse the crash on the other side. Roger Babson spent decades unsuccessfully
trying to defeat the laws of gravity and legions of investors are trying once again to defy gravity in the equity
markets today, but they might be wiser to heed the quote on the Bubble Card (issued after the South Sea Bubble
debacle) above “The headlong Fools plunge into South Sea water, but the sly long-heads wade with caution after.
The first are drowning but the wise last. Venture no deeper than the knees or waist.” In other words, only fools
abandon caution and blindly invest in things simply because they are going up. Wise investors always buy with a
Margin of Safety. Graham described it this way, “The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of
rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future. That margin of safety is counted on to protect the
investor against loss or discomfiture in the event of some future decline in net income. The margin of safety
is always dependent on the price paid.” Remember, there is no investment good enough that you can’t mess up
by paying too high a price.
Jason Zweig included the story of Sir Isaac and the South Sea Bubble to draw a very real and tangible contrast
between not so intelligent investing and the definition of intelligent investing that Ben Graham espoused in the
book that Zweig felt so honored to re-introduce. Benjamin Grossbaum was born on May 9, 1894 (as an aside it is
kind of fun to share a birthday with the father of Value Investing, so perhaps I come by my Value bias honestly) in
London, England to Jewish parents. When he was just a year old his family immigrated to New York City, and
they changed their last name to Graham (to try and mitigate the impact of discrimination against Jewish
immigrants). Graham’s father died when he was very young and his family experienced significant poverty, which
motivated him to become a serious student so he could contribute to supporting the family. Graham excelled in
the classroom and attended Columbia University ahead of most of his peers, actually completing his graduation at
twenty. Remarkably, given his challenging family life, Graham was awarded the Salutatorian title, which at the
time was awarded to the second highest graduate of the entire class of college graduates in the United States. Like
Roger Babson, he was offered a position as an instructor in English, Mathematics, and Philosophy, but declined in
order to go to Wall Street where he joined Newburger, Henderson & Loeb as an assistant in the bond division
where he earned the princely sum of $12 a week. At the time, common stocks other than Railroads and Utilities
were considered speculations and there were very few positions dealing in equities, thus this period was virgin
territory for securities analysis.
Graham made his mark in 1915 with an analysis of an arbitrage opportunity in the liquidation of Guggenheim
Exploration Co. by going long the holding company and shorting the underlying copper producers (an early hedge
fund trade). Graham wrote a series of three papers titled Lessons For Investors in 1919 (rather bold for a 25-year
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old) espousing the benefits of buying sound common stocks at reasonable valuations. One of the more notable
lines in the papers was, “If a common stock is a good investment, it is also an attractive speculation,” a
comment that would come back to haunt him a decade later. Graham was made a partner of the firm in 1920 and
his rise in prominence on Wall Street during the Roaring Twenties Bull Market was nothing short of spectacular.
In 1923, Louis Harris lured Graham away from Newburger, Henderson & Loeb to open a partnership with
$250,000 (about $3.6 million today), Grahar Corporation, where Graham would be paid a salary of $10,000 (about
$145k today) and investors would earn the first 6% return and then the partnership would be entitled to 20% of the
profits above that (the first hedge fund). Grahar primarily made arbitrage trades and purchases of common stocks
that appeared to be undervalued. After two and a half years, Graham had produced strong returns and some
friends convinced him they could bring new accounts with a 50/50 profit split, so Graham proposed a new fee
structure to Mr. Harris, who politely declined and they dissolved Grahar. On January 1, 1926 the Benjamin
Graham Joint Account was opened with $450,000 (about $6.1 million today) of capital from friends and family.
Jerry Newman joined Graham later that year and would become a colleague and partner for the next thirty years
(until Graham retired in 1956). The partnership made 26% in the first year and then doubled the assets in 1927 to
finish at $1.5 million. During the final year of the Bull Market in 1928, the partnership was up 51% and Graham’s
take was an astonishing $600,000 (about $8.5 million today). The legendary Bernard Baruch summoned the young
Graham (now all of 34) to his office and offered him the opportunity to become a junior partner, telling him “I’m
now 57 and it’s time to slow up a bit and let a younger man like you share my burdens and my profits.” Tragically,
Ben Graham believed (like Sir Isaac in the South Sea Bubble) that gravity no longer applied to him and that there
was no reason for a “near-millionaire” (his words) to work for someone else, even the eminent Bernard Baruch.
Coming into 1929, the Benjamin Graham Joint Account was fully invested in many non-traditional equity
positions (read highly speculative) and a large number of arbitrage positions involving equity and convertible
bonds. The capital of the partnership had grown to $2.5 million (about $35.6 million today), but with short
securities proceeds and margin, the total capital was $4.5 million (almost two times leverage). As the market
continued to roar higher during the summer months of 1929, Graham and Newman lost their discipline to fully
hedge the arbitrage positions (they believed they were giving up too much profit from the losses on the shorts) and
the net position of the fund grew larger. When “Babson’s Break” came in early September, Graham was clearly in
the Irving Fisher camp believing that the markets had reached a permanently higher plateau, and they did not sell
positions even as they declined. The partnership ended the year down (20%), not much worse than the (15%) loss
of the DJIA. In early 1930 there was a small recovery in stock prices (the “Return to Normal” phase that occurs
during the first phase of the Crash following every Bubble in history) and confidence returned to Wall St. and
investors were convinced that despite the extreme valuations, it was a return to business as usual (despite growing
storm clouds in the economy). That January, Graham met a gentleman on a trip to Florida, John Dix, a 93 year-old
retired businessman, who told him “Mr. Graham, I want you to do something of the greatest importance. Get on
the train to New York tomorrow. Sell out your securities. Payoff your debts and return the capital to the partners in
the Joint Account. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I were in your position.” Graham thought the advice was
preposterous and headed back to New York completely dismissive of Mr. Dix’s wisdom. 1930 would turn out to be
the worst of Graham’s career as the Joint Account lost (50%) versus the DJIA (29%) decline as he scrambled to
reduce the margin debt. Given the high degree of leverage, it was actually impressive that the entire equity was not
wiped out. The next two years were down as well (although Graham managed to lose much less than the market),
but over the four-year period, the Benjamin Graham Joint Account lost (70%) compared to the DJIA decline of
(74%). The Laws of Investment Gravity proved true for Graham, and it turned out that for every action (bubble)
there is an equal and opposite reaction (crash).
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By the end of the year, Graham had adjusted the Joint Account to a less leveraged position and began searching for
lessons to be learned from the Crash. In June of 1932, Graham wrote three articles for Forbes magazine titled, “Is
American Business Worth More Dead Than Alive?” At the time, over 40% of NYSE listed stocks selling at less
than net working capital and many were selling below cash assets. Graham believed the stock market now placed
an inordinately low valuation on corporate America. Back in 1928 Graham had begun teaching at his alma mater,
Columbia Business School, and after learning his hard lesson about risk, he began to refine his ideas and theories
about Value Investing. Graham decided to write a book about his what he had learned during the Crash and
collaborating with colleague David Dodd produced Security Analysis in 1934. That tome (it is 735 pages) has
become the Bible for investment professionals, and made the iconic duo of Graham & Dodd synonymous with the
discipline of Value Investing. Living through the Crash had fundamentally changed Graham and the book
discussed the process necessary for a true investor to evaluate and form an assessment of a business simply from a
thorough analysis of the financial statements of the company (to remove oneself from the emotion of the markets).
Throughout his early financial writing and during his investment career Graham had been highly critical of the
“greatly altered and irregular financial reporting” produced by corporations, which he believed made it challenging
for investors to understand the true nature of the businesses’ financial dealings. One of Graham’s most
impassioned views was that companies should not keep all of their profits as retained earnings, but pay out regular
dividends to shareholders (focusing on dividend paying companies is one fundamental tenet of Value Investing).
Graham was also very vocal following the Crash in criticizing financial advisors who had urged clients to purchase
stocks at any price so long as there was a belief that stock prices would continue to appreciate (like the South Sea
Company). The book’s primary theme was that sound financial management was rooted in fundamental and
comprehensive analysis of companies’ actual financial condition (not promises of growth in the future). Most
importantly, the book described the disposition of an investor necessary to perform well over the long-term was
one focused on making purchases of securities in order to gain satisfactory returns, but to never have meaningful
risk of financial losses. Specifically, Graham wrote, “You must thoroughly analyze a company, and the
soundness of its underlying businesses, before you buy its stock. You must deliberately protect yourself
against serious losses. You must aspire to “adequate,” not extraordinary, performance.” Graham went on to
differentiate between Investing and Speculating when he said, “An investment operation is one which, upon
thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these
requirements are speculative. It is proper to remark, moreover, that very few people are consistently wise or
fortunate in their speculative operations.” Graham himself had no moralistic position on speculation, but
rather believed it to be hazardous to the average investor’s financial health, saying, “Outright speculation is
neither illegal, immoral, nor (for most people) fattening to the pocketbook.” Security Analysis was ultimately
about discipline and process, and legions of investors over the decades have credited their success to systematically
following the dogma of the Graham & Dodd philosophy. To take the essence of 735 pages into a single sentence,
Graham believed an investor should “Purchase securities at prices less than their intrinsic value as determined
by careful analysis, with particular emphasis on the purchase of securities at less than their liquidating
value.”
That same year, given that the losses in the Joint Account were so severe and the high water mark was so far away
(Graham and Newman had also not earned any fees for five years and lost most of their fortunes), several investors
agreed to restructure the fund with a more traditional fee structure where the duo could earn 20% of the profits
going forward. In a rather extraordinary fashion, over the next two years all previous losses were recovered. But in
1936, the IRS ruled that the Joint Account was not truly a partnership, but an operating company, so Ben and Jerry
(not the ice cream guys) had to convert the fund to the Graham-Newman Corporation. Graham spent the next
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few years honing his investment style to profit from buying undervalued stocks (rather than leveraged speculation)
with an emphasis on managing downside risk (by buying companies below their liquidation value). After the
experience of the Crash, Graham was determined to use investors’ collective fear and greed to his advantage and to
have the discipline to buy $1.00 for $0.50 when investors were fearful and securities were put on sale. The new
corporation performed well, compounding somewhere near 20% (records are a bit sparse for this period) and Ben
& Jerry moved the fee schedule to a more favorable level by 1946 where they received base salaries of $30,000 each
(about $400,000 today) plus 12.5% of the dividends paid and 10% of the profits (roughly equivalent to 20% to 25%
carried interest). The corporation had grown to $4.5 million in assets (about $60 million today), and things were
going well for the partners. Graham continued to teach at Columbia Business School, and had become a prolific
writer (like Roger Babson) contributing articles to newspapers, trade journals and began his second book.
Graham wrote The Intelligent Investor in 1949, which was considered equally as groundbreaking as Security
Analysis upon its release. The book was highly acclaimed, and today it is widely regarded as one of the best
investment books ever written. Graham’s creative genius inspired the construction of an allegory to personify the
Stock Markets. Mr. Market was a very obliging fellow who turns up at the shareholder’s door every day offering to
buy or sell their shares at a different price. Most often, the price offered by Mr. Market seems plausible, but
sometimes it seems rather ridiculous. The shareholder is free at all times to either agree to the offered price and
trade with Mr. Market or to ignore him completely. Mr. Market doesn’t mind either way and will always be back
the following day to quote another price. The point of the story is that an intelligent investor should never regard
the whims of Mr. Market as the determining factor in the value of the shares they own. An intelligent investor
should concentrate on the actual performance of the companies, by focusing on dividends received and the actual
financial results reported by the company rather than be concerned with Mr. Market’s irrational behavior in
quoting prices based on fear and greed. The most important point is that that an intelligent investor can say “No”
to Mr. Market at any time. Graham wanted people to understand that investment should be dealt with in a
professional and business-like manner, and by treating investment in such a manner makes investment activities
more intelligent.
Two years earlier a young Warren Buffett had enrolled at Columbia and came to study under Graham after reading
The Intelligent Investor. Buffett became one of Graham’s favorite students and the two developed a very close
relationship. When Buffett graduated in 1951, he moved back to Omaha and took a job selling securities. Over the
next few years he would send ideas to Graham (Buffett described it as pestering him) and eventually Graham
responded with a letter saying, “Next time you are in NYC, come see me.” In 1954, Buffet took that trip and
Graham offered him a job at Graham-Newman Corp. Buffett picked up and moved to White Plains, New York,
with his pregnant wife and daughter to work for his mentor. Two short years later (when Buffett was only 25)
Graham told Warren that he was going to retire, and that he wanted him to be his successor and junior partner of
the fund with the Jerry Newman’s son Mickey as the senior partner. By 1956, the fund had grown to $7 million
(about $65 million today). More importantly to Buffett at the time, it had become one of the most famous funds
on Wall Street, and he had the opportunity to step into the shoes of his hero (Buffett even named his first son
Howard Graham Buffett). Buffett described the decision as “traumatic” but he wanted to move back to Omaha.
He had turned the $9,800 (about $95,000 today) he had when he graduated into $127,000 (about $750,000 today),
and he had determined that he and his family could live off of the interest ($12,000) and he was going to “retire.”
Buffett famously quipped to his wife, “compound interest guarantees that I’m going to be rich.” He painfully told
Graham that he was going to leave Graham-Newman and the rest, as they say, is history (this sequence of events
has been referred to as the $50B decision). Buffett went on to become a practicing disciple of Ben Graham and has
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said often that, “No one ever lost money following Graham’s principles.” Like the old investing saw, “If you take
care of the losses, the gains will take care of themselves.” Focusing on managing risk is the very essence of being an
intelligent investor.
Let’s take a look at some of the incredible accumulated wisdom contained in Ben Graham’s books and discuss how
by following his principles, we too can become Intelligent Investors. First and foremost, Graham believed that
when you purchase a security you are really buying a piece of a business (so you should think like an owner). “A
stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with
an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.” The key point here is that the value is something
inherently different than the current price. We have written in previous letters how George Soros always began
from the premise that the current price was wrong (whereas most begin from assumption that current price is
right), and that prices are actually continually moving from undervalued to overvalued and rarely spend much
time at fair value. Graham referred to securities transactions as “operations” saying, “An investment operation is
one that can be justified on both qualitative and quantitative grounds. The quantitative factors lend
themselves far better to thoroughgoing analysis than do the qualitative factors. The former are fewer in
number, more easily obtainable, and much better suited to the forming of definite and dependable
conclusions.” Graham wanted to emphasize focusing on the things we know, that which we can analyze because it
has been reported in the financial statements, and is far better than trying to synthesize the myriad opinions and
qualitative assessments that result from human emotions and interpretations. The focus then is to determine the
intrinsic value (fair value) of the company and then compare this with Mr. Market’s current offering price to
determine where the opportunities exist to buy (or sell). “In all of these instances he appears to be concerned
with the intrinsic value of the security and more particularly with the discovery of discrepancies between
the intrinsic value and the market price. We must recognize, however, that intrinsic value is an elusive
concept.” Graham makes the point that even when the analyst performs exhaustive diligence of the data there is
still the potential for error in calculations, omission of critical information or other variables that might make our
determination of intrinsic value less than optimal. He went further to say that one way to combat against this
potential for error is to remain focused on factual data, not future forecasts. “Analysis is concerned primarily
with values which are supported by the facts and not with those which depend largely upon expectations.
Analysis of the future should be penetrating rather than prophetic.” In the event that analysis of the future
must be entertained, that process should be even more diligent and rigorous and must steer clear of being
predictive or reliant on speculation.
Importantly, “Security analysis does not assume that a past average will be repeated, but only that it supplies
a rough index to what may be expected of the future. A trend, however, cannot be used as a rough index; it
represents a definite prediction of either better or poorer results, and it must be either right or wrong.
While a trend shown in the past is a fact, a future trend is only an assumption.” The human brain is
hardwired to look for patterns in data, and Graham is telling us that a good securities analyst must be able to resist
the urge to extrapolate current trends into the future or assume that patterns that have existed in the past will
necessarily repeat in the future. We have all been warned over time what happens when you assume (you make an
@#$ out of you and me). He reminds us that we must also resist the urge to think that some new environment will
exist in the future and that our analysis should hold up under normal conditions, not just ideal conditions.
“Security analysis, as a study, must necessarily concern itself as much as possible with principles and
methods which are valid at all times or, at least, under all ordinary conditions.” Graham rails against one of
the most common constructs of investment analysis, the idea that the current earnings are representative of future
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prospects, and considers the idea that one can have precision in arriving at intrinsic value based on some multiple
of current earnings to be absurd. “The whole idea of basing the value upon current earnings seems inherently
absurd, since we know that the current earnings are constantly changing. And whether the multiplier
should be ten or fifteen or thirty would seem at bottom a matter of purely arbitrary choice.” Alternatively, he
recommends using a normalized earnings concept (average of past earnings over a market cycle) to arrive at a
more appropriate valuation. “Security Value = Normalized Earnings × (8.5 plus twice the expected annual
growth rate)”. Having been victimized by speculative companies during the Crash, Graham refined his technique
for identifying potential companies for purchase with a list of criteria. “Seven Statistical Requirements: 1)
Adequate size 2) A sufficiently strong financial condition 3) Continued dividends for at least the past 20
years 4) No earnings deficit in the past ten years (No loss) 5) Ten year growth of at least one third in pershare earnings 6) Price of stock no more than 1.5 times net asset value 7) Price no more than 15 times
average earnings of the past three years.” While there are many who would say this unnecessarily restricts an
investor from participating in growth stocks, Graham would somewhat agree as he had many reasons why
investing in Value was preferable to Growth.
He begins by stating that, “It has long been the prevalent view that the art of successful investment lies first in
the choice of those industries that are most likely to grow in the future and then in identifying the most
promising companies in these industries. Obvious prospects for physical growth in a business do not
translate into obvious profits for investors.” Clearly there are many stories of incredible fortunes being made by
buying into a new growth company early in its life and holding on while the story unfolds, creating untold riches
(MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, etc.). That said, “Perhaps many of the security analysts are handicapped by a flaw in
their basic approach to the problem of stock selection. They seek the industries with the best prospects of
growth, and the companies in these industries with the best management and other advantages. The
implication is that they will buy into such industries and such companies at any price, however high, and
they will avoid less promising industries and companies no matter how low the price of their shares. This
would be the only correct procedure if the earnings of the good companies were sure to grow at a rapid rate
indefinitely in the future, for then in theory their value would be infinite. And if the less promising
companies were headed for extinction, with no salvage, the analysts would be right to consider them
unattractive at any price.” While there is no question that buying into great growth companies early on can be
very profitable, the main point is that there is a point at which investors abandon discipline, believing that they can
pay any price for a company. History is replete with examples where this is clearly not true and has been disastrous
for financial well-being (Sir Isaac’s second foray into the South Sea Company comes to mind, as does CSCO in
2000). The problem for market participants is that “The more a stock has gone up, the more it seems likely to
keep going up. That commonly held belief is, unfortunately, flatly contradicted by a fundamental law of
financial physics, the bigger they get the slower they will grow. A $1B company can double its sales fairly
easily, but where can a $50B company turn to find another $50 billion in business?” It seems that investing
and physics have many things in common and that Newton’s Laws are applicable in many areas of the markets.
Graham came to the conclusion over time that, “There is really no way of valuing a high-growth company, in
which the analyst can make realistic assumptions of both the proper multiplier for the current earnings and
the expectable multiplier for the future earnings.” His value-orientation was rooted in the construct that the
more one deviated away from the facts and figures of the current business (the things we know) and focused more
on expectation and forecasts (thinks we think we know, but do not), the more unlikely we are to arrive at any sort
of useful valuation. “The more dependent the valuation becomes on anticipations of the future, and the less
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it is tied to a figure demonstrated by past performance, the more vulnerable it becomes to possible
miscalculation and serious error.” Humans are optimistic by nature and they are prone to make assumptions
that the future will be better than the past. Valuations of growth companies are, therefore, likely to always be
skewed away from the actual intrinsic value. The longer the time horizon of the extrapolation, the worse these
errors becomes and the more potential for meaningful loss for the investor if events do not turn out as anticipated.
Axiomatically, “If the share price advances, it is because most investors expect earnings to grow.” That said,
extrapolating that growth well out into the future is dangerous, as it has been shown that “Extremely few
companies have been able to show a high rate of uninterrupted growth for long periods of time.” Capitalism
works, and when there are excess profits in a particular area, competition arises (barring regulatory barriers that
create or preserve monopolies) and lowers the expected growth rate of the incumbents. A telltale sign of
impending danger is when it becomes easy for companies to raise capital. “The public would do well to
remember that whenever it becomes easy to raise capital for a particular industry, both the chances of
unfair deals are magnified and the danger of overdevelopment of the industry itself becomes very real.” Excess development in an industry will reduce future profits, full stop. Think of the myriad examples over the
years like the massive overproduction in U.S. Shale in 2014 (resulting in collapse in oil prices and share prices) and
perhaps the potential for an unwinding in Tesla at some point given the public’s willingness to give Mr. Musk as
much capital as he wants despite not showing any capacity to convert it into profits for shareholders. Graham was
very exact on this point, saying, “People who habitually purchase common stocks at more than about 20 times
their average earnings are likely to lose considerable money in the long run.” While there is no question you
can make money in the short run trading in high valuation securities, Graham would differentiate that activity
(speculating) from investing as we will see below.
Another point that Graham makes about growth companies is that an undue amount of faith must be placed in the
management since there can be so little hard evidence to analyze. He states that “Objective tests of managerial
ability are few and far from scientific. In most cases the investor must rely upon a reputation which may or
may not be deserved.” It is very difficult over short periods of time to differentiate between skill and luck, and
oftentimes the reputation of a management can be the result of the latter where the former is preferred. The bigger
problem is that “The investment world nevertheless has enough liars, cheaters, and thieves to keep Satan's
check-in clerks frantically busy for decades to come.” There are many promoters, storytellers and actual
fraudsters that would like to separate investors from their hard earned money, and it can be challenging to tell the
good guys from the bad guys because they all sound good (they don't have the ones that sound bad make
presentations). Only through very thorough analysis of data can you protect yourself from these bad actors. Alas,
there is one tiny problem (that Graham railed against his entire career). There are accounting tricks and gimmicks
that can obfuscate the true results, making a story seem much better than it actually is, but there are some warning
signs to look out for. “Among the things that should make your antennae twitch are technical terms like
“capitalized,” “deferred,” and “restructuring” and plain-English words signaling that the company has
altered its accounting practices, like “began,” or “change.” In the end, deep analysis can protect investors from
many problems. Graham suggested to look beyond the Income Statement, saying “Astute observers of corporate
balance sheets are often the first to see business deterioration”. If you believe in Graham’s fundamental
assertion that investing is all about buying a piece of a business, then buying and owning real assets is a great place
to start securing a margin of safety.
One of Graham’s most fundamental teachings is the difference between Investing and Speculating. The primary
challenge for Investors is to remember that security prices are not determined by analysis, but rather by emotion,
and, hence, cannot be the starting point for an Investor. “Security prices and yields are not determined by any
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exact mathematical calculation of the expected risk, but they depend rather upon the popularity of the
issue.” Securities are priced by Mr. Market, the collective opinion of all market participants and “The recurrent
excesses of its advances and declines are due at bottom to the fact that, when values are determined chiefly
by the outlook, the resultant judgments are not subject to any mathematical controls and are almost
inevitably carried to extremes.” As the pendulum swings back and forth between undervaluation to
overvaluation the arc will be amplified by the emotion of the humans interacting in the markets and will be driven
by the overall levels of fear and greed. That emotional element creates a problem for an investor in that “The
concept of safety can be really useful only if it is based on something more tangible than the psychology of
the purchaser.” The ability to ascertain the intrinsic value of a security therefore will be dependent on the
investor ignoring the current price and focusing solely on the financial information of the business. Hence, “The
individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means that he should
be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that
satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase.” There is one issue here, which
is that Graham believed “The average person knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” He
was implying that the average market participant would not do the proper amount of work to determine the value
of the assets, but rather simply observe the current price and be prone to buying if the price was rising and selling if
the price was falling. “An investment is based on incisive, quantitative analysis, while speculation depends on
whim and guesswork. Operations for profit should be based not on optimism but on arithmetic.”
Graham said the better response to the movement of prices is indifference. “The investor with a portfolio of
sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor
become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his
convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored. They need pay attention to it, and act upon it,
only to the extent that it suits their book, and no more.” Ignoring Mr. Market, that person who shows up every
day incessantly imploring you to act, is very challenging (particularly in a 24/7 financial news and social media
world), but the ability to “don't just do something, sit there” is a fundamental key to long-term investing success.
“Thus the investor who permits themselves to be stampeded, or unduly worried, by unjustified market
declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That
investor would be better off if their stocks had no market quotation at all, for they would then be spared the
mental anguish caused by other persons’ mistakes of judgment.” A true investor never surrenders their power
to Mr. Market, but rather maintains control by having the willpower to simply ignore the current market price.
That willpower comes from doing the work to understand the intrinsic value of the security and having the
discipline to tune out the noise. Graham would say to “Invest only if you would be comfortable owning a stock
even if you had no way of knowing its daily share price.” Focusing on the value of an asset as opposed to the
price of an asset provides the owner with an amazing advantage over other market participants and keeps the
operation, as Graham would call it, business-like and unemotional. Removing emotion from the process facilitates
a longer time horizon and helps mitigate one of the challenges of participating in the securities market, that “In the
short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” Graham was
adamant in his view that “The stock investor is neither right or wrong because others agreed or disagreed
with him; he is right because his facts and analysis are right.” Opinions are less valuable than facts, so
maintaining a focus on security analysis, rather than market sentiment, keeps you squarely in the investor camp
rather than the speculator camp.
Short-term price fluctuations have the potential to cause the most trouble for investors and Graham says very
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clearly that “The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude
toward stock-market movements. The speculator’s primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from
market fluctuations. The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at
suitable prices.” Differentiating between trying to anticipate the action and reactions of others and maintaining a
discipline to acquire securities below their intrinsic value is what separates investors and speculators. In the end,
“investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.” The
ability to remain dispassionate about the wild gyrations of the markets and immune to the constant nagging by the
proverbial salesman at your door allows an investor to disengage from playing against others and focus on
controlling their own emotions, thus allowing the efficient and effective execution of your investment plan. One of
the most important distinctions between investors and speculators is the time horizon in which they operate. That
said, Graham has an interesting perspective on this, saying, “It’s time for everyone to acknowledge that the
term “long-term investor” is redundant. A long-term investor is the only kind of investor there is. Someone
who can’t hold on to stocks for more than a few months at a time is doomed to end up not as a victor but as
a victim.” Investing is basically time horizon arbitrage, and the equity markets are the transmission mechanism
that ruthlessly transfers wealth from the active to the patient. After his experience during the Crash, Graham came
to appreciate the significance of taking advantage of the power of time and quipped that investors should “Plant
trees that other men will sit under.” Present in each of these quotations is the takeaway that the longer the time
horizon, the better the returns. Buffett took this construct one further saying an investor should buy quality
companies and hold them indefinitely (and even better to lever them up with negative cost of capital from
insurance float, pure genius).
Graham talks about one of the perils of short time horizons is that it necessarily leads to higher levels of activity
(taken to the extreme with day trading), making a distinction between a “securities” analyst and a “market” analyst
and what that means with regard to levels of activity. “The cardinal rule of the market analyst [trader] that
losses should be cut short and profits should be safeguarded (by selling when a decline commences) leads in
the direction of active trading. This means in turn that the cost of buying and selling becomes a heavily
adverse factor in aggregate results. Operations based on security analysis are ordinarily of the investment
type and do not involve active trading.” If one performs securities analysis in order to own parts of businesses
then one is an investor and if one performs market analysis to determine the direction of prices then one is a trader
(speculator). “Much as the investor would like to be able to buy at just the right time and to sell out when
prices are about to fall, experience shows that he is not likely to be brilliantly successful in such efforts and
that by injecting the trading element into his investment operations he will disrupt the income return on
his capital and inevitably shift his interest into speculative directions.” He goes on to say that there is a
fundamental problem in the business of securities (Wall Street) that unfortunately pushes people toward market
analysis and away from the security analysis. “We cannot help thinking too, that the average individual who
opens a brokerage account with the idea of making conservative common stock investments is likely to find
himself beset by untoward influences in the direction of speculation and speculative losses.” Wall Street
makes money on trading volume and the idea of occasionally buying securities and, worse yet, holding them for
long periods of time (perhaps indefinitely) does not align well with their primary means of deriving revenue.
“Nevertheless, since a stockbroker’s business is to earn commissions, he can hardly avoid being speculationminded.” Graham does not begrudge the brokers’ objectives, but rather points out that it is an unavoidable
outcome of the misalignment of the compensation system. The investor makes money by sharing in the profits of
the business over the long term, while the speculator makes money from capturing profits from active trading
around price movements. The speculator is a much more profitable client for the broker. He says it very clearly,
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“People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers.” This
line brings to mind the image of the cover of the infamous book, Where Are All the Customers’ Yachts?
Graham learned the hard way (as did Newton) that there are meaningful, perhaps even biological, differences
between Investors and Speculators. Seth Klarman (another Graham disciple and subject of our letter last fall, The
Value of Value) says that Value Investors are genetically predisposed to investing in that particular way, they are
born with it. He even goes so far as to say that any other approach to the markets feels like gambling. “It is the
essential character of the speculator that he buys because he thinks stocks are going up not because they are
cheap, and conversely when he sells. Hence there is a fundamental cleavage of viewpoint between the
speculator and the securities analyst, which militates strongly against any enduring satisfactory association
between them.” Investors focus on value and Speculators focus on price. Given that the two constructs rarely
spend any appreciable time at the same level (think pendulum swinging) it is logical that there would be an
intellectual and psychological tension (or more like a magnetic polarization) between the two. “The stock
speculator does suffer, in fact from a well-nigh incurable ailment: The cure he seeks, however is not
abstinence from speculation but profits. Despite all experience, he persuades himself that these can be made
and retained; he grasps greedily and uncritically at every plausible means to this end.” Graham is (perhaps) a
little extreme in equating speculative urges to a disease, or addiction, but he truly believed (again, having learned
the hard way) that buying securities simply because of their price was moving was hazardous to your health (both
financial and physical). After spending a great deal of time speaking to the negative aspects of Speculation,
Graham does offer an olive branch to those who would veer off the straight and narrow path of investing toward
the crooked road of speculating, saying that it is possible to have “intelligent speculation,” but immediately offers
three things that are clearly unintelligent (the theme of our letter). “There is intelligent speculation as there is
intelligent investing. But there are many ways in which speculation may be unintelligent. Of these the
foremost are: (1) speculating when you think you are investing; (2) speculating seriously instead of as a
pastime when you lack proper knowledge and skill for it; and (3) risking more money in speculation than
you can afford to lose.” The second two points go to our Three Buckets Rule of Investing – everyone should have
three allocations for their capital, the Liquidity Bucket, the Get Rich Bucket, and the Stay Rich Bucket. Wealth
owners (individuals or institutions) should put 10% to 15% in the Liquidity Bucket to cover two years of their
spending requirements (doubling the average spending rate of 5% to 7%), 10% to 15% in the Get Rich Bucket
(Speculation), and the balance in the Stay Rich Bucket (Investment). We always say that the Get Rich Bucket it is
designed for things like hot stock tips and friends’ business ventures, so “keep it small, because you are likely to
lose it all.” However, it is the first point of the three that is the theme of the letter since it is what always gets people
in trouble, conflating Speculating and Investing and worse, not knowing the difference. “The risk of paying too
high a price for good quality stocks (while a real one) is not the chief hazard confronting the average buyer
of securities. Observation over many years has taught us that the chief losses to investors come from the
purchase of low quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.” When market participants lose
discipline to focus on value and buy stocks at any price (particularly low quality ones), simply because the prices
are rising, is what makes those participants Not So Intelligent Investors (read Speculators).
When it comes to building a portfolio, Graham has a lot of wisdom. We begin with a truism that we refer to
around Morgan Creek as Rule #1 of Investing, “An Investor should never buy a stock because it has gone up or
sell one because it has gone down. They would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: “Never buy
a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.” The key word
here is substantial because it implies that the Speculators have temporarily taken control of the price, in other
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words Mr. Market becomes particularly irrational, and an Investor must resist the temptation to act based in the
same direction of the movement of price. In fact, an Investor should be motivated to act in opposition to the
direction of current price moves. If price is declining, the security is becoming more attractive as it moves toward
or below fair value (cheaper), and if the price is rising, the security is becoming less attractive as it moves toward or
above fair value (more expensive). Graham says the “Principle for the securities analyst: Nearly every issue
might conceivably be cheap in one price range and dear in another. Buy cheap and sell dear.” The critical
assumption here is that the Analyst has done the work and understands fair value in order to make these
determinations. Graham was a proponent of deep analysis and focus on a relatively small number of opportunities
(he would argue there are not that many truly great businesses an Investor would want to own), and actually taken
to the extreme offered that “It is undoubtedly better to concentrate on one stock that you know is going to
prove highly profitable, rather than dilute your results to a mediocre figure, merely for diversifications
sake.” He backs away from the extreme of the single stock portfolio (although we know from history that all truly
great fortunes came from highly concentrated positions, individual stocks, businesses, real estate assets, etc.), and
provides a range of acceptable diversification. “There should be adequate though not excessive diversification.
This might mean a minimum of ten different issues and a maximum of about thirty.” All things in
moderation (even moderation) should be the mantra, as concentration in a smaller portfolio of thoroughly
researched ideas executed at prices below fair value should produce the best returns over the long-term. To
summarize, “It always seemed, and still seems, ridiculously simple to say that if one can acquire a diversified
group of common stocks at a price less than the applicable net current assets alone (after deducting all prior
claims, and counting as zero the fixed and other assets) the results should be quite satisfactory. They were so
in our experience, for more than 30 years.” (We might be a stickler for details here and say the twenty-four year
period from 1933 to 1956 produced the satisfactory results, but whose place is it to nit-pick with an Investment
Legend?)
Another important point that Graham makes is that an Investor need not wait for a market crash in order to build
positions in a portfolio. “It is far from certain that the typical investor should regularly hold off buying until
low market levels appear, because this may involve a long wait, very likely the loss of income, and the
possible missing of investment opportunities.” The point here is that there are always company specific
opportunities to investigate and ultimately purchase regardless of how high or low the overall market level happens
to be at the current time. The old saw, it is a market of stocks rather than a stock market applies here, and the good
securities analyst can always uncover things to spend time on and allocate capital toward. Even in a raging Bull
Market (where many, if not most, securities would be overvalued, perhaps like today), Graham says “If an
Investor wants to be shrewd they can look for the ever-present bargain opportunities in individual
securities.” One of Ben’s favorite words is bargain, which implies a stock that is selling materially below its
intrinsic value, offering the purchaser a significant Margin of Safety (room to be wrong in the actual analysis).
Bargains arise due to the collective behavior of market participants that is the opposite of speculation (or rather the
fallout of such practices), where holders of a security lose faith when the price falls and sell, pushing the price
down. Graham says that at this moment “Issues appeared to be worth more than their price, being affected by
the opposite sort of market attitude, which we might call “underspeculation,” or by undue pessimism
because of shrinkage in earnings.” He goes further to say that there are limited buyers in these situations
because “People are constitutionally averse to buying into a troubled situation.” Human beings tend to
extrapolate current trends, and have a difficult time seeing how, or why, a situation (bad or good) will change. In
business and investing there is an automatic self-correcting mechanism that begins to work when the pendulum
swings too far to one side (gravity would be the force on the pendulum) and brings the extreme situation back
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toward equilibrium. In essence, “Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.” In
business, capitalism eventually wins out, and “The absence of new competition, the withdrawal of old
competition from the field and other natural economic forces may tend eventually to improve the situation
and restore a normal rate of profit on the investment.” The most important point to remember here is that an
Investor makes the most money when things go from truly awful (abnormally bad) to simply bad.
Graham would argue (and Buffett has been quoted in agreement) that a disciplined approach to buying bargains
allows an Investor to participate in the stock market without the fear of losing money (big statement). Graham
posited the actual question (and provided an answer) “Can you really make money in stocks without taking a
serious risk? Yes indeed if you can find enough bargain issues to make a diversified group, and if you don’t
lose patience if they fail to advance soon after you buy them. Sometimes the patience needed may appear
quite considerable. But most of the bargain issues in our experience have not taken that long to show good
profits.” Graham touches here on one of the most fundamental character traits of true Intelligent Investors,
patience. Having the patience to allow the purchases to revert to their fair value is critical to the success of an
Investor. Further, there is another character trait, which is equally necessary for success, courage. “Traditionally
the Investor has been the man with patience and the courage of his convictions who would buy when the
harried or disheartened speculator was selling.” Courage is the ability to keep your head when everyone around
you is losing theirs and the willingness to act when the opportunity arises. Graham says that, “One must have the
means, the judgment, and the courage to take advantage of opportunities that knock on his door.” Having
the means implies that there is capacity in your portfolio to add new positions and for the best Value managers
over time that has meant having meaningful levels of cash on hand to be prepared to pounce when opportunities
present themselves. Legendary Investors like Buffett, Klarman, Robertson and Soros would always have large pools
of cash, but what really separated them from other investors is that they would raise cash as market prices rose,
while the speculators became increasingly invested as the market grew more and more expensive (chasing prices,
insuring they have the maximum exposure to the market at precisely the wrong time). When the inevitable crash
comes (the equal and opposite reaction to the action of the growing bubble), the Intelligent Investor has the means
(cash), the judgment to act, and the courage to buy the bargains as they appear. “In the world of securities,
courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.” Once
the positions are taken, great Investors have the ability to trust their work as an analyst and hold those positions
regardless of market price fluctuations (even buying more should the price fall after initial entry).
One of Graham’s most important distinctions is made between securities and markets. As described above, he
believed that those who buy securities are Investors and those who try to time the market at Speculators. “Note
our basic distinction between purchasing stocks at objectively low levels and selling them at high levels
(which we term Investment) and the popular practice of buying only when the market is ‘expected’ to
advance and selling when it is ‘due’ to decline (which we call Speculation).” He goes further to make the
point that there is actually a predominance of the latter, which he says is a good thing for the securities business.
“It is fortunate for Wall Street as an institution that a small minority of people can trade successfully and
that many others think they can. The accepted view holds that stock trading is like anything else; i.e. with
intelligence and application, or with good professional guidance, profits can be realized. Our own opinion is
skeptical, perhaps jaundiced. We think that, regardless of preparation and method, success in trading is
either, accidental and impermanent, or else due to highly uncommon talent. Hence the vast majority of
stock traders are inevitably doomed to failure.” Graham says that most of success in Speculation is due to luck
and that there are a very select few that have the talent to consistently win the loser’s game. He makes another
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important point in noting that the business attracts individuals of above average intelligence (like Sir Isaac) but
that this intellectual capacity can oftentimes actually be a liability rather than an asset. “It is no difficult trick to
bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of
profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.”
Learned people (Graham actually wrote doctors were the worst offender) believe they can perform well in the
markets simply because of their intelligence, but the vast majority come to learn that it is Intelligent Investing
(from discipline, process and experience) that is more important than intelligence itself. Graham himself was an
example of this during the Crash in 1929 as the Salutatorian of the Class of 1919 nearly lost everything because he
believed he was smarter than the markets.
Graham also speaks to the folly of the production of “research” on Wall Street designed to predict how a particular
sector, industry or security will perform relative to the markets. “Aside from forecasting the movements of the
general market, much effort and ability are directed on Wall Street toward selecting stocks or industrial
groups that in matter of price will ‘do better’ than the rest over a fairly short period in the future.” He
argues that much (if not most) of this activity is a waste of time and should be categorically ignored by true
Investors. “Logical as this endeavor may seem, we do not believe it is suited to the needs or temperament of
the true investor, particularly since they would be competing with a large number of stock-market traders
and first-class financial analysts who are trying to do the same thing.” The challenge of competing against
other very talented analysts and investors is that there is a sort of math problem in that “As in all other activities
that emphasize price movements first and underlying values second, the work of many intelligent minds
constantly engaged in this field tends to be self-neutralizing and self-defeating over the years.” The focus on
price movements rather than fundamental value pits large numbers of highly talented individuals against one
another in an attempt to anticipate the anticipations of others and those activities become like sine waves of
various frequencies that effectively cancel each other out and produce little gain for the participants. Graham
doesn't mince words here saying, “It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of
market forecasts.” The problem he says is that the average person would rather do what is easy rather than what
is hard and are always in search of a get rich quick angle (again harkening back to Newton’s time). “Market
analysis seems easier than security analysis, and its rewards may be realized much more quickly. For these
very reasons, it is likely to prove more disappointing in the long run. There are no dependable ways of
making money easily and quickly, either in Wall Street or anywhere else.” Imagine that, there are no get rich
quick schemes that actually work. To that end, when someone (like Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff) promises you
a way to invest and make money that seems easy (and too good to be true), don't walk, run away, because it
probably is too good to be true. The Intelligent Investor would rather do what is hard yet dependable.
Graham also speaks to the psychology of market forecasts and speculation saying that, “The processes by which
the securities market arrives at its appraisals are frequently illogical and erroneous. These processes are not
automatic or mechanical but psychological, for they go on in the minds of people who buy and sell.” The
idea of investing in the realm of the collective emotion of market participants (where irrationality frequently
dwells) pales in comparison to the idea of investing in well-researched companies (where rationality and logic
frequently dwell). Graham says that investing is best when it is most business-like and that mechanical and
disciplined focus is a much more likely way to generate superior returns. “The mistakes of the market are thus
the mistakes of groups or masses of individuals. Most of them can be traced to one or more of three basic
causes; Exaggeration, Oversimplification or Neglect.” We know that the madness of crowds is a pervasive
problem in the investment markets and that humans are prone to going to extremes based on 1) their belief in the
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exaggerated claims of the promoters of a business, 2) the use of overly simplistic heuristics to avoid having to do
real analytical work, and 3) the lack of effort on most market participants part to diligently follow through on ideas
and monitor investments on an ongoing basis (to catch changes as they occur in real time). Graham believed that
given these handicaps the likelihood that individuals could be successful in timing that market was quite low,
saying, “Catching the swings on a marginal basis is impracticable.” The best argument that he made for not
attempting the folly of being a market analyst was that there was little room for error and that “In market analysis
there are no margins of safety; you are either right or wrong, and if you are wrong, you lose money.”
Almost like betting on red or black, the odds of beating the house (making consistent return), where the house is
the collective irrationality of multitudes of emotional market participants are very low indeed.
Graham provided a great deal of insight on the characteristics that lead to successful outcomes for Intelligent
Investors over time, things like discipline, rationality and consistency. “The disciplined, rational investor
neither follows popular choice nor plays market swings, rather he searches for stocks selling at a price
below their intrinsic value and waits for the market to recognize and correct its errors. It invariably does
and share price climbs. When the price has risen to the actual value of the company, it is time to take
profits, which then are reinvested in a new undervalued security.” Maintaining a focus on buying securities
below their fair value is half of the story, but having the discipline to sell the security when it recovers and
approaches fair value is the area where the average investor fails most often. So much of the investment industry is
focused on the buy side, trying to ascertain which securities to buy and when to buy them, that establishing,
honing and consistently executing an intelligent sell discipline become an afterthought for most investors. The key
to success (on both sides) according to Graham is the ability to remain focused on value rather than price. In fact,
an Intelligent Investor uses price extremes simply as an trigger to initiate or eliminate positions such that “Market
movements are important to an investor in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels
at which he would be wise to buy and high price levels at which he certainly should refrain from buying and
probably would be wise to sell.” Once again it is critical to understand (and have calculated) fair value of the
security in advance of the price move so that the proper trigger levels can be assigned to the security. Once the
price targets are known, the investment operation becomes very business-like, disciplined and free from emotion.
Graham stressed that “The intelligent investor realizes that stocks become more risky (not less) as their prices
rise and less risky (not more) as their prices fall. The intelligent investor dreads a Bull Market, since it
makes stocks more costly to buy. And conversely (so long as you keep enough cash on hand to meet your
spending needs), you should welcome a Bear Market, since it puts stocks back on sale.” An investor likes to
buy assets at cheap prices and sell assets at dear prices whereas a speculator does precisely the opposite (and hence
routinely loses money). Graham believed that “To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most
people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.” The key difference is that a solid process
can produce satisfactory returns, but it takes talent, skill, wisdom and extraordinary discipline to achieve truly
outstanding results, but like most things in life “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”
The challenge for Intelligent Investors is that the markets spend a greater percentage of the time in irrational states
and are constantly moving from extremes in one emotional state (fear) to the other (greed). Graham described this
as follows “Most of the time stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both
directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble, to give way
to Hope, Fear and Greed.” Human nature trends toward these extremes and causes the markets to spend
inordinate amounts of time in the overvalued and undervalued states. “The market is a pendulum that forever
swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism
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(which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from
pessimists.” Great investors simply remain dispassionate and focused on the intrinsic values of securities, happily
agreeing to sell to Mr. Market when he becomes ebullient and buy from him when he becomes despondent.
Speculators constantly fluctuate between the extremes of optimism and pessimism because they have no grounding
in value to enable them to remain objective; thus, they swing wildly from buyers to sellers at precisely the wrong
times. To be successful as in Investor, Graham says one needs two things, “There are two requirements for
success in Wall Street. One you have to think correctly and secondly you have to think independently.” An
Intelligent Investor does the work as a security analyst so that they can think clearly and correctly (based on the
facts and data), and they have the ability to separate from the herd and think differently from the crowd. Having a
variant perception is the key to making meaningful returns over time as when everyone is thinking the same there
is not much thinking going on and there is not much alpha to be gathered. Graham believed that “Wall Street
people learn nothing and forget everything,” so they were prone to make the same mistakes over and over again,
and that an investor with discipline, courage and cash could capitalize on these mistakes as they arise. “It requires
strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the crowd and also patience to
wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.” Particularly in the day and age of instant gratification,
this last point may be one of the toughest tenets the Intelligent Investor, having to wait for long periods of time for
the fat pitch to come. Jeremy Grantham says that a great investor really only needs one or two great ideas a year,
and Warren Buffett says one of the great things about investing is there are no called third strikes, so a hitter can
stand at the plate with the bat squarely resting on their shoulder until the meatball pitch comes right down
Broadway just begging to be hit out of the park.
One of the biggest threats to investors is the cyclical nature of markets that leads them to move to extremes in
valuation and, in some extreme cases, into bubbles. George Soros says that every bubble begins from a reasonable
state that moves to an extreme based on a misperception. Graham describes the phenomenon similarly (with a
little less delicacy) saying, “Very frequently, however, these appraisals [the value of a share] are based on mob
psychology, on faulty reasoning, and on the most superficial examination of inadequate information.” It is
said that people go mad in crowds and markets have forever fallen victim to the herd mentality that exists as price
begins to take precedence over value and speculation begins to crowd out investment. As the prices continue to
rise “The market [makes] up new standards as it [goes] along, by accepting the current price (however high)
as the sole measure of value. Any idea of safety based on this uncritical approach [is] clearly illusory and
replete with danger.” The construct of Margin of Safety quickly becomes “old fashioned” and fundamental
notions of value, discipline and process are relegated to the dust bin (temporarily) and prognostications of new
paradigms and choruses of “it's different this time” become the norm. Mathematically, the higher the price, the
greater the danger, but as speculative fever overtakes the majority of market participants, the self-reinforcing
behavior actually creates a belief (albeit completely wrong) that risk has been reduced because of some new, new
thing like technological advancements, central bank largesse or government intervention. “With every new wave
of optimism or pessimism, speculators are ready to abandon history and time-tested principles, but we
investors cling tenaciously and unquestioningly to our prejudices.” Having the courage of your convictions to
toe the line and stay the course (mixing metaphors, we realize) is critical in these times of speculative excess to
protect ourselves from the risk of ruin. Graham summarizes saying that “While enthusiasm may be necessary
for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster.” Disaster may
sound overzealous but history has shown time and again that the result of not following Graham’s rules does
indeed result in disaster for those who become Not So Intelligent Investors. The worst part of these late stages of a
bubble (where we believe we are today) is that as confidence rises (it always peaks at the end of expansionary
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cycles), speculators utilize ever-increasing amounts of margin debt to turn their easy money into big money.
Graham makes a note of a small problem in this pursuit. “The outright owner can afford to buy too soon and to
sell too soon. In fact, he must expect to do both and to see the market decline farther after he buys and
advance father after he sells out. But the margin trader is necessarily concerned with immediate results; he
swims with the tide, hoping to gage the exact moment when the tide will turn and to reverse his stroke the
moment before. In this he rarely succeeds, so that his typical experience is temporary success ending in
complete disaster.” The worst possible outcome for a speculator is to get lucky early (have a good outcome after a
bad decision) as it emboldens them to go back for more. This is the phenomenon that sunk Sir Isaac in the South
Seas misadventure. His temporary success turned into complete disaster (from which he never truly recovered) as
he learned once again of the laws of gravity.
Graham summarized the key characteristic of Intelligent Investors very succinctly, emphasizing their focus on the
goals and objectives of their financial plan (spending needs, asset growth needs). He also clearly separates success
from beating some arbitrary market index return. In the end, the behavioral discipline to execute your plan with
an eye toward preserving capital (avoiding losses) first, and growing capital second, is a superior way to measure
success. “The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by
whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you
want to go. In the end, what matters isn’t crossing the finish line before anybody else but just making sure
that you do cross it.” The risk of permanent impairment of capital (risk of ruin) is the primary risk that
Intelligent Investors fear, not volatility of returns, or trailing some capital markets index over a random time
period. Graham would argue (and we would agree wholeheartedly) that risk management is more important than
return management, and that compounding capital over the long run should achieve superior returns by
controlling downside. “The investor who buys securities only when the market price looks cheap on the basis
of the company’s statements and sells them when they look high on the same bias, probably will not make
spectacular profits. But on the other hand, he will probably avoid equally spectacular and more frequent
losses. He should have a better-than-average chance of obtaining satisfactory results. And this is the chief
objective of intelligent investing.” George Soros said that investing was supposed to be boring, and that if it was
exciting you were probably doing it wrong. Graham agrees with that sentiment and places consistent generation of
solid (if unspectacular) returns over time as the primary goal of intelligent investing. Graham believed (as did his
student, Warren Buffett) that “Investing is a unique kind of casino, one where you cannot lose in the end, so
long as you play only by the rules that put the odds squarely in your favor.” This is a very strong statement
indeed, but one that has been proven over the decades by disciples of the art of intelligent investing.
The importance of Graham’s work cannot be overstated in the environment we find ourselves in today as investors.
There are striking similarities in the political, social, economic and investment environment between today and
1929, and it is interesting how our study of “Babson’s Brilliance” last quarter led us to the brilliance of Benjamin
Graham this quarter. Babson was the first to warn us of the imminence of the bubble getting ready to burst in the
fall of that fateful year. We find it interesting that he utilized an indicator based on the Laws of Action and
Reaction pioneered by his hero Sir Isaac Newton. It is of the utmost importance that we realize that both Newton
and Graham learned difficult (and costly) lessons about the power of gravity to collapse a bubble that has formed
due to excessive speculation in the markets. We see evidence that a similar type of bubble is forming in the U.S.
equity markets today, and that market participants are ignoring the wisdom of the father of Value Investing.
Market participants today are speculating on price, instead of focusing on value, leads us to classify them as Not So
Intelligent Investors. Mark Twain said that “History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes,” and Graham had a similar
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quote, “I am more and more impressed with the possibilities of history's repeating itself on many different
counts. You don't get very far in Wall Street with the simple, convenient conclusion that a given level of
prices is not too high.” Wall Street is incented to promote the idea that stocks can only go up and that investors
should buy them. The Central Banks around the world have been frantically trying to repeal the Law of Gravity
since the Global Financial crisis by pumping liquidity into the system in order to revive growth and profits. They
have failed miserably on both fronts. Global GDP growth has continued to decline (Demographics is Destiny) and
profits in the U.S. have been the same since 2012. Equity markets have continued to rise, simply because of the
belief held by Speculators that when interest rates are low one can pay a higher multiple for earnings. Nearly the
entire gain in the S&P 500 since 2012 has been due to the P/E rising from 15X to 26X. We expect that some time
very soon we will be reminded that while Sir Isaac may not have been such a great investor, he was a brilliant
physicist and mathematician, and his Laws are immutable. Roger Babson spent the later years of his life trying to
find a way to combat Newton’s Law of Gravity, but he never did find that elusive gravity-shielding device. We
don't believe that those buying stocks today at these crazy valuations (second worst next to 2000) have found the
solution either and we will all learn once again that #GravityRules.
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First Quarter Review
At the end of 2015 we created our #2000.2.0 thesis
(now renamed #2000Redux because the dots mess up
the hashtag in Twitter), which posited that the period
from 2016 to 2018 would resemble the period of 2000
to 2002 in the U.S. equity markets. In writing the
letter last quarter, we looked back and compared the
path of 2000 to the path of 2016 and found that for the
first ten months of the year there were some striking
similarities. We wrote about the specifics of the paths
as follows, “In 2000, the S&P 500 was down hard in
the first six weeks of the year, falling (9%) by midFebruary, while in 2016 the drop was (11%). In 2000,
the market rallied halfway back in March and was
mostly flat during the summer leaving the index down
(3%) coming into Election season, while in 2016 the
markets rallied all the way back by April, suffered a
setback during Brexit, but rallied back to up 2% on the
eve of the election.” The similarities ended there,
however, as in 2000 the markets sold off sharply after
the election to finish down (9%), but after the surprise
victory by Mr. Trump, the narrative quickly shifted
from Doomsday to Boomsday and the S&P 500
surged to finish the year up 12%. Given the dramatic
divergence, we went on to write, “A legitimate
question to ask is does the positive market reaction
post-election negate the #2000.2.0 thesis? For now,
we will say “Not yet” as there are still signs that
economic growth is slowing (Q4 GDP just
disappointed) and should there be a 2017 Recession
(like 2001) equities could catch down in a hurry.” In
2001, it became apparent that the economy was
slowing quickly as Q1 GDP came in down (1.3%), but
there was not much talk about recession because Q4
had been strong, up 2.3%, and the conventional
wisdom at the time was that you needed two negative
quarters in a row to have a recession. Curiously, that
view was disproved later in the year as Q2 GDP was
up 2.1% and Q3 was down (1.1%) and NBER finally
called the recession in November saying it started in
March (ironically, they later said it ended in
November). Q1 GDP in 2017 was very disappointing
at only 0.7% (subject to two more revisions), but it
wasn't negative and we will have to see how the
balance of the year unfolds on the growth front. We
concluded this section last quarter by introducing a
new idea that perhaps the U.S. election surprise had
stimulated a new path for the markets, saying, “All of
that notwithstanding, there is an alternative scenario
that actually could be developing in real time that we
will discuss in the 10 Surprises section below, in that
perhaps Mr. Trump turns out to be the second
coming of Herbert Hoover and 2017 will look more
like 1929 than 2001 and #2000.2.0 gets replaced with
#WelcomeToHooverville,” and we provided color on
how that sequence of events might unfold. So let’s
dive in to the Q1 results and see if we look more like
2001, 1929 or perhaps another path altogether.
The U.S. equity market in Q1 was the mirror image of
Q4 as the ebullience surrounding the hope trade based
on the Trump trifecta (tax reform, deregulation &
fiscal spending) began to fade as investors saw that the
actual implementation of Mr. Trump’s proposals
might be more difficult than anticipated. We wrote
last time that during the final couple months of 2016
investors had decided to completely ignore economic
reality as “concerns about declining global growth,
moribund trade volumes, falling margins in the U.S.,
the threat of rising rates, declining liquidity and
extremely lofty valuations gave way to enthusiasm for
a more pro-business agenda in Washington and the
delivery of the trifecta of tax reform, regulatory relief
and fiscal stimulus.” In the weeks following the
election, small cap stocks surged, value stocks crushed
growth stocks and anything even remotely related to
infrastructure soared on the expectation of a trillion
dollars of fiscal stimulus somehow immediately being
spent in 2017 (we will bet 2018 at the earliest, if it ever
happens), but that excitement began to fade as we
penned that letter. The S&P 500 rally stalled a bit in
the first few weeks of the New Year, but as soon as the
Republicans introduced a plan to repeal and replace
Obamacare, markets shifted back into rally mode in
February and stocks were up another 6% for the first
two months of the quarter. A funny thing happened
during the restart of the rally, breadth disappeared
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and investors began to focus intently on a handful of
large cap technology companies and were willing to
pay any price to get back into the #FANG stocks (FB,
AMZN, NFLX and GOOGL) which surged 22%, 18%,
16% and 5%, respectively, while the S&P 500 was flat
in March and finished up a more modest, but still very
strong, 6.1% for Q1 (for comparison in 1929 Q1 was
up 3% and in 2001 was down (10%)). What is so
funny about the Tech move is that these were the
exact same stocks investors had shunned in the weeks
following the election (on fears of rising rates hurting
valuations of growth stocks) taking them down (8%),
(5%), (1%) and (3%), respectively, while they pushed
the S&P 500 up 5% and the Russell 2000 up an
astonishing 14% (as we mentioned last time the thesis
here is that small-cap stocks will benefit
disproportionately from tax reform, assuming it
happens). The panic buying in the #FANG names was
so strong that these stocks rose nearly twice as much
in Q1 as they did in all of 2016 when they were “only”
up 10%, 10%, 8% and 2%, respectively. Another big
tech name ran hard as well in Q1, as AAPL jumped
24% during the quarter and while the media tried to
come up with all kinds of stories for how Apple could
surge so strongly (the same media left AAPL for dead
last year after what was described as a disappointing
iPhone 7 launch), but there was a very simple
explanation. AAPL is now the largest market cap
company in the world ($750B) and makes up 3.7% of
the S&P 500 Index, so record flows into passive
indices and ETFs have prompted huge flows into
AAPL. Looking quickly at the trailing twelve months,
the overall market has had a very strong bounce off
the February bottom, with the S&P 500 up 17.2%, the
DJIA up 19.9%, and the R2000 up 26.2% (amazingly
more than half of that in Q4). As we mentioned
above, Q1 was pretty close to the inverse of Q4 and
across all these indices they completely reversed that
order in 2017, rising 6.1%, 5.2%, and 2.5%,
respectively.
While the hope trade clearly was a factor in the strong
returns for the S&P 500 in Q1, there was also some
evidence that corporate earnings were likely to rise
during the quarter for the first time since September
2014 and equities tend to move higher when EPS are
rising. The tougher question to answer is whether
those higher earnings are already in the price, as
rather oddly, stocks rose despite falling EPS over the
past three years. Simply, the P/E multiple expanded (a
lot) and investors became willing to pay more for a
dollar of earnings over time. The P/E of the S&P 500
expanded from 17 to 25 over that period (up nearly
50%) which accounts for the majority of the rise in the
index. We asked last time, “Why would investors pay
more for companies that aren’t growing earnings?
The narrative is that interest rates are falling so
investors can pay a higher multiple for future
earnings. The problem is that interest rates were dead
flat over the five years leading up to Election Day. The
narrative really breaks down post-election, as rates
have backed up 30% (higher discount rate should
mean lower prices in absence of EPS growth) while P/
E ratios expanded yet again.” We couldn't find a
logical answer last quarter and we still struggle to see
where truly meaningful EPS growth is going to
materialize given the tepid economic growth during
Q1. To provide a sense of how bad the slowdown has
been, the Atlanta Fed GDPNow indicator began the
quarter with an estimate of Q1 GDP of 3.5% (crazy
talk) and over the past few months that estimate has
been revised downward all the way to 0.2% (logical
talk). For comparison, the NY Fed also does an
estimate, but they use more “soft” data like surveys
and they are predicting 2.7% (more crazy talk). The
first estimate for Q1 was 0.7% (will likely head lower
in 2nd and 3rd estimates), so once again hard data beats
soft data. The one ray of hope that everyone is clinging
to has been that the recovery in energy earnings will
drive S&P 500 EPS to a high single digit growth rate in
Q1 and perhaps stocks reflected that development in
their 6.1% move. Perhaps some additional tailwinds
came from the abrupt about face in interest rates as
the 10-year Treasury yield reversed its entire move
since the election, falling from 2.43% to begin the year
right back to 2.14% on April 1st (the precise level it
was on November 1st).
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We want to take a minute here to go back to
something we pointed out last quarter about the
absolute lunacy going on in small cap stocks. We
wrote, “One last point here is that as scary as the surge
in the S&P 500 P/E ratio has been, it barely registers
on the crazy scale compared to what is happening in
small-cap land. The R2000 Index P/E was 108 one
year ago and now is listed as “nil” because there are so
many companies with negative earnings they have
decided not to calculate the ratio.” Let that sink in for
a minute. There a so many companies with negative
EPS in the R2000 Index that the WSJ can’t calculate
the P/E ratio. At the end of April, the WSJ’s trailing
P/E ratio for the R2000 was 104, but what most
resources show is the Forward P/E (using forward/
fantasy estimates and excluding negative numbers)
which makes small cap stocks appear to be almost a
bargain at 25X next year’s pro-forma earnings
(#EarningsBeforeBadStuff). Back in Q4 no one
seemed to care about valuations as investors
scrambled to buy the most out of favor sectors (and
individual stocks) to try and capitalize on the Trump
trifecta hope trade. We wrote that, “Investors don't
seem to care much as the R2000 has surged 18% in the
three months since the election. Clearly our caution
seems to have been unwarranted, particularly over the
past three months (in keeping with the theme of this
letter), but harkening back to our Shakespeare letter,
in matters of great importance (like protecting capital)
“better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”
Interestingly, the R2000 rally occurred over four short
weeks following the election and the index finished
Q1 almost precisely at the 2016 peak of 1388 reached
on December 9th (was 1386 on 3/31) and has been
dead money for the last four months. Another
interesting note is that flows into the R2000 ETF
(IWM) peaked at $8 billion in December and have
now turned the other way and most recently there was
a ($4 billion) outflow (a net $12 billion turnaround) as
investors are beginning to question how much of the
Trump trifecta actually gets done in 2017 (Twofecta,
Onefecta, Nofecta?).
If we examine the Style index returns in Q1 we see the
reversal of the Value dominance over Growth all
across the capitalization spectrum in Q4.
We
discussed in the Q2 letter that, “it is possible that there
is a meaningful shift underway in global equity
allocations to favor more value and cyclical names.
While this shift doesn't fit exactly with a slowing
global economy and stress in the financial sector, this
trend will be worth monitoring very closely in the
months and quarters ahead.” In Q4, that trend
continued as Value trumped Growth (pun intended)
after the election, but it appears that more logical
heads are prevailing again and the reflation trade has
suddenly fallen out of favor with Growth retaking the
lead. The RTop200G surged an amazing 9.6% versus
the RTop200V up only 3.1%, the RMidG was up 6.9%
versus the RMidV up 3.8% and the R2000G was up a
solid 5.4% versus the R2000V actually falling (0.1%).
The spread between Large Growth and Small Value
was about as large as we have seen in recent memory
at 10%. If we look at the trailing twelve months,
Value kept the upper hand over Growth as the
RTop200V surged 19% versus the RTop200G up
16.2%, the RMidV jumped 19.8% versus 14.1% for the
RMidG and the R2000V climbed 29.4% (that number
is right) while the R2000G was up 23%. As we
predicted might happen when we said “history is
written by the winners, so we will hear a lot about how
obvious the small Value trade was in many year-end
letters, but back in February when High Yield spreads
were blowing out and many of these companies were
teetering on the precipice of bankruptcy it was not
obvious that there would be a lot of great outcomes”
and there were plenty of letters touting how clear it
was to be overweight Small Value. The truth is that it
was far from clear for the first ten months of the year
and, most importantly, there was almost no time to
reposition a portfolio after the election as much of the
big moves in the small-cap trifecta sectors occurred
over a matter of hours and days.
Looking at the performance of industry sectors in the
S&P 500 during Q1 it was again a complete reversal
from the last quarter of 2016. We described the postelection euphoria in the last letter saying “in Q4 it was
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the same sectors that were rallying and falling, but for
a completely different set of reasons (new Narrative)
as investors shifted (at an astonishingly rapid pace)
from fear of a Trump victory to enthusiasm for the
Trump victory as all things physical soared on the
prospects for Fiscal Stimulus (disregarding the reality
that it will likely be 2018 before any money is actually
spent…) and Financials launched into the
stratosphere on expectations that President Trump
and his Cabinet full of ex-Goldman guys will repeal
Dodd-Frankenstein and rig the system (even more
than it already is) in favor of the Banksters.” One
thing that was similar to Q4 was that a number of
sectors had a great year (returns that most would be
happy with over a year) in the first three months of
2017. Technology was up a very strong 12.6% on the
back of the #FANGS (as we discussed above), but also
on a number of semi-conductor companies that have
been completely en fuego, as NVDA rose another 7%
(on top of 225% in 2016), AVGO jumped 23%, MU
surged 28% along with AMD (the long suffering
whipping boy for INTC which has reinvented
themselves yet again). AMD was the leader of the
pack in 2016, up 300%, so with another 28% jump it is
now up 410% for the last fifteen months (very gaudy
returns indeed, but recall what we wrote last time
about what often happens after gaudy returns). Just
for some fun perspective, in the nine years leading up
to Q1 2016, AMD was down 90% while INTC was up
65%, but over the past year the alligator jaws have
closed hard and AMD is now down just 10% over the
decade while INTC has been frozen at up 65% for the
ten years. There are a number of people who are very
excited about the prospects for semi-conductors in the
coming years as the Internet of Things (IoT),
autonomous vehicles, home robotics and other forms
of technology become more integrated into society.
There is one futurist group that has calculated that
today there are four microprocessors active for every
person on the planet and they estimate that this
number could rise to 1000 over the next few decades.
Sounds a bit fantastical, but when we think about
what it means to have truly automated and connected
functionality, the demand for semi-conductors will
indeed grow exponentially. It only takes a couple
handfuls of doublings of capacity to get to very large
numbers (4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024…).
The other sector that had a great “year” in Q1 was
Consumer Discretionary, up 8.5%, which may sound
a little funny given all the negative headlines about
how bad retail has been and how AMZN is turning
the big box retail business into roadkill. We have
discussed the huge opportunity on the short side in
traditional retail for a number of quarters and have a
material short position in our discretionary portfolios
in the department stores and general retailers. Names
like JCP, TGT, M, DDS, KSS were pounded during the
quarter, falling (26%), (24%), (16%), (16%) and (20%),
respectively, while JWN managed to keep losses to
(2%) and GPS actually eked out a small gain at up 3%.
One would think with these kind of horrible numbers
that the Consumer sector would have been down, but
when you dive in a little deeper into the makeup of the
ETF you find that it has a lot of technology exposure
in names like CHTR, CMCSA and PCLN (which rose
15%, 9% and 20%, respectively) and some of the core
names like DIS, HD and MCD also has strong
quarters jumping 7%, 9% and 8%, respectively, but it
was the crazy weighting of AMZN at 14% of the index
that drove the great returns as Amazon soared 18%
during the quarter (remember that most of that was
making up for the (11%) drubbing in Q4, so over the
six months only up 5%). These results point to one of
the dangers of ETFs (and mutual funds) insofar as
many of them have holdings that are not fully
consistent with their names. For example, if an
investor had an inkling that they wanted to be short
(or long) the retail sector and didn't want to use single
name shorts, they would be challenged with the two
choices in the SPDR ETF family, XLY (Consumer
Discretionary) and XLP (Consumer Staples) as both
were up smartly in Q1 despite many of their
components being down big, but capitalization
weighting and lack of choices (only 10) make tactical
investing difficult as the instruments are too blunt to
truly express many tactical views. Speaking of
Consumer Staples, it was one of the three worst
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First Quarter 2017
performing sectors in 2016 (along with Healthcare
and Utilities) as investors shunned anything with the
slightest hint of defensiveness in the last few weeks of
the year as the Pavlovian salivation for all things
Trumpian induced selling of stable sectors in favor of
buying all things material (Energy, Industrials,
Materials) and Financials. We wrote in the 2016
review in January that, “safety was punished for the
full year and Healthcare brought up the rear, down
(2.7%) and was the only sector with a negative return
(beautifully setting up a worst to first trade for
2017…),” and those words turned out to be a bit
prophetic. As we keep saying, Q1 was the anti-Q4 and
the Trump Pump suddenly turned into the Trump
Dump in March and quietly Healthcare, Utilities and
Staples became three of the top five performing
sectors for the quarter, rising 8.4%, 6.4% and 6.4%,
respectively. Healthcare didn't quite make it all the
way back to first in Q1, but there is still a lot of year
left and we think the valuations in Healthcare
continue to be very attractive (particularly in Biotech
and Specialty Pharma) so there is plenty of upside left
in this sector. Now because there were two solid
months before the Trump Dump began, even a few of
the laggards in Q1 put up solid returns as Materials
rose 5.9% and Industrials were up 4.6% (but both
were up 7% on March 1st and have faded more in
April). Another Trump Pump darling, Financials,
was up the most in the first two months, surging 7.5%,
but then collapsed along with the AHCA (and interest
rates) to finish only up 2.5% (the sector is now down a
couple percent through April). At the bottom of the
barrel we find Telecom, down (4%) on troubling
earnings declines, and Energy, down (6.7%), right in
line with oil price declines (U.S. production increases
have dampened the impact of OPEC production cuts)
and completing another perfect first to worst Q1
transition (very common for best sector in prior year
to come under selling pressure in Q1 as investors push
gains into the next tax year).
Thinking about the U.S. equity market as a whole, we
wrote last time that “in a world of flat overall earnings
growth and the prospect of higher interest rates, it
does seem aggressive to only have one sector with a
negative return in 2016 and the vast majority of
sectors be up double digits. Again it comes back to P/
E multiples expanding and the 22% increase in the P/
E of the SPX over the past twelve months does justify
the moves, but the math says expanding multiples
simply pull return forward and future return
expectations fall (indicated by Wall Street estimates
for year end 2017 SPX targets being around 2350,
almost where we are now).” In Q1, the P/E of the S&P
500 again increased from 24X to 25X (3.6%) and
accounted for more than half of the rise in stocks, but
at least it appears that there was some underlying
earnings growth this time. The real problem will be
whether that EPS momentum can be maintained as
economic growth has come crashing down during the
quarter and companies are slashing earnings forecasts
at an alarming rate. More alarming is that the
slashing of revenue growth is even more dramatic as
accounting tricks can make EPS look better (like stock
option expensing and stock buybacks), but it is really
tough to fake revenues and without solid revenue
growth it is hard to see from where the big earnings
jumps are going to come. Perhaps that is why the
pundits’ forecasts for 2017 returns for 2017 were so
muted. There is still one consistent tailwind for
equities that also contributed to returns in Q1 which
we again discussed last time when we wrote, “perhaps
one of the most interesting things that impacted U.S.
equity markets in 2016 (that no one seemed to talk
about) was the continuation of bond purchases by the
Fed, despite the publically announced end of
Quantitative Easing (QE). The Fed claims that
reinvesting in the maturing securities in their
portfolio is somehow different than buying bonds in
the open market, but we don't see the difference. No
matter what you call it, the Fed removed around $220
billion of bonds from circulation during 2016 and that
liquidity continued to find its way into financial assets
(read stocks).” This thesis comes from the great work
of Larry Jeddeloh at TIS Group (one of our favorite
research providers; if you don't read Larry’s daily
note, you should) on how QE impacts the equity
markets. Larry developed a model that showed how,
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First Quarter 2017
“every $100 billion of QE has translated into 40 S&P
500 points.” By Larry’s math, the Fed’s purchases (it
would have us believe. We discussed this conundrum
a couple quarters ago saying, “the biggest challenge
is not QE, definitely not QE) during the year
accounted for half of the S&P 500 returns in 2016 (220
times 40 equals 88 of 195 points). The Fed schedule of
bond reinvestments (don't call them QE purchases)
shows a total of $194 billion for 2017 so with about
$50 billion of transactions in Q1, there should have
been about 20 S&P points of equity tailwind during
the quarter. The Index rose 124 points during Q1, so
if we attribute 20 points to QE (we still call it QE) and
75 points to multiple expansion, that leaves about 29
points that came from EPS growth (which seems
about right as earnings begin to roll in).
for the Fed is that despite many claiming that they are
behind the curve and must raise rates, it is really
tough to see how a tightening bias makes sense in a
world where the world’s largest economy continues to
languish below stall speed (2% GDP growth). With
The other big event that should have impacted equity
returns in Q1 was the acceleration of the Fed’s
schedule for raising the Fed Funds rate. Despite an
abundance of evidence to the contrary (GDP growth
estimates collapsing, Citi Economic Surprise Index
falling off a cliff) the hawks at the Fed have convinced
The Dove in Chief (Ms. Yellen) that there is a “risk of
an overheating” (actual phrase from Fed speech) in
the economy and they bumped rates 25 basis points
again on March 15th after raising them in December
for the first time in a year. We wrote last time that,
“history would argue that an increase in the discount
rate (absent a large increase in profit growth) should
put pressure on equity multiples and put equities at
risk of a correction,” but the markets took the
December bump in stride and kept the party going
into the first couple months of the New Year. We
can’t seem to get the Shakespeare line “Beware the
Ides of March” out of our heads lately as the S&P 500
took on a little different tenor when it became clear
that the Fed was going to go ahead and raise rates
again at the March 15th meeting (indexes peaked on
March 1st). Perhaps the more sluggish trajectory
could also be attributed to some geopolitical concerns
(Syria & North Korea) or to the fact that GDP
estimates and EPS estimates are being slashed
seemingly daily, but for whatever reason there seems
to be some doubt creeping into the hope trade and
maybe everything is not as awesome as QEeen Janet
the Q4 GDP number coming in well below
expectations and the full year of 2016 GDP growth
clocking in at what can only be described as an
anemic 1.6% pace, the myriad arguments being
trumpeted by all sorts of members of the Trump
Administration that the U.S. economy is accelerating
is comical. The Growth Narrative has shifted into
overdrive and the Trumpkins are all saying that the
grand vision of Trumponomics will deliver yuge
growth, yuge profits and (according to a member of
the Trump team on CNBC) Dow 25,000 in 2017. We
will take the under on the GDP growth (2017 will
struggle to be above 1%) and while the DJIA did
indeed take out both the 20,000 and 21,000 levels
during Q1, we expect the ultimate trend to head back
down later in the year and we are more likely to get to
use those #Dow20000 hats again before we use any
#Dow25000 hats.
When it comes to reflecting on international equity
returns, we said last time that it is critical to, “think
beyond just the dimension of returns from the
underlying businesses and include the return from
currency translation over the course of the time we
own the security. For any global investor that means
having a view on the relative attractiveness of your
home currency versus the other currencies in which
you may invest your capital.” With every investment
decision you make there is also an embedded decision
on which currency you want to have (or not have)
exposure to throughout the duration of the
investment. The investor can choose how to manage
that risk/exposure through hedging (or not hedging).
This issue has become front of mind for many
investors in the recent past given the status of the
dollar as the world reserve currency and the impact of
global currency wars (race to the bottom) that were
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First Quarter 2017
raging as many countries attempted to devalue their
currencies to win export business. We went so far last
time as to say, “Getting the dollar right might be the
most important investment decision we could make
during the year. The reason for the hyperbole on the
Greenback (beyond my normal hyperbolic style) was
that so many of the other market opportunities had
become so tightly correlated to the dollar and if you
got the dollar call right you could make better returns
in equities, bonds, commodities and (obviously)
currencies.” On top of the traditional impact of
currency on global investing, the surprise victory by
Mr. Trump in the election has unleashed a whole new
set of fears and concerns for dollar-based investors as
many of the policy proposals (like the border
adjustment tax and trade and energy policies) being
discussed by the new administration could have
profound implications for the dollar. Interestingly,
the rhetoric from the Trump camp has softened
dramatically since Q4 and they have backed down
from labeling China a currency manipulator
(resulting in a very stable USDRMB cross rate,
basically unchanged since a week after the election).
We have also heard multiple spokespeople say that the
administration favors a weaker, not stronger dollar
(presumably because it helps U.S. exporters; but wait,
isn’t that what we were so mad at China for doing?).
We discussed last time how there is some
misperception in just how strong the Greenback has
been in the past couple of years and wrote, “what has
been interesting about the dollar since the beginning
of 2015 is that after the 25% surge in 2H14, the DXY
peaked at 100 and was locked in a channel between 95
and 100 right up until Election Day last year.” The
channel continued to hold in Q1 as DXY gave back all
of the Trump Bump (it peaked at 103.25 on 12/20/16)
and fell from 102.21 at year-end to 100.56 on 3/31.
We have been one of the very few dollar bears in the
past year, as we have had one of our Ten Surprises
focused on USD in 2016 and 2017. Last year it was
King Dollar Dethroned and this year it was King
Dollar’s Last Stand and while DXY did recover from
the dramatic decline from 100 to 92.5 last May, given
the broad consensus that DXY would rally, having it
be right where it started fifteen months later (and the
same since 3/9/15) feels like a win. The danger zone
for the Dollar is if DXY breaks below 99 (as it recently
did…), as there is not a lot of support below that level
and it feels like the downward trend could accelerate
fairly quickly.
As we discussed in the U.S. equity sector section
above, Q1 was the inverse of Q4 as the hope trade
subsided and the initial failure of the Obamacare
repeal plan created some doubt in investors’ collective
mind about how effective the new administration
would be. The dollar was no different as the DXY fell
(1.6%) after surging 7.1% in Q4. An important thing
to keep in mind about DXY is how the index is
dominated by the Japanese yen and the euro (even
more euro than yen) and that there are other more
diversified currency indices as well (e.g. trade
weighted) which have different return profiles. For
example, the trade weighted basket fell twice as much
as DXY, down (3%), on the strength of EM currencies
(which completely defied the consensus belief that EM
would get killed when the Fed raised rates). This
matters for tactical investors who might see a big
move in the dollar versus some other currency
(Brazilian real or Russian ruble) and try to use the
DXY as a hedge only to be disappointed because the
USDEUR cross didn't move in the same magnitude.
We discussed how hedges for specific markets
(particularly Japan) needed to be more focused in the
last letter when we wrote, “if you invested just in
Japanese equities over the past few years hedging may
have been critical since it began and ended the period
around the same level of 115, but the gyrations
between 100 and 120 have been brutal. I say ‘may
have’ because the second important point is that
holding period dictates demand for hedging. Take the
ten example, if you bought Japanese equities in June
of 2014 and held them to today you would have no
currency impact, but if you have traded them over
shorter periods of time in between the FX impact
could have been monstrous.” Those monstrous
gyrations were on full display in Q1 as the Trump
strong dollar wave that pushed the USDJPY from 101
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First Quarter 2017
to 118 in the weeks following the election reversed on
a dime on 12/15 and during the first three months of
2017 the yen defied the prognosticators and rallied
from 116.9 to 111.4 (and continued upwards in April
to 109), up 5% for Q1. Kuroda-san has done his best
to jawbone down the yen in recent months, but the
safe haven trade has trumped the hope trade so far in
Japan. There will be much more to be written on the
yen story in coming quarter, but suffice it to say here
that Japan turns to Kuroda-san to weaken the yen the
same way Princess Leia turned to Obi-Wan Kenobi in
the original Star Wars movie saying, “save us ObiWan, you are our only hope”. It seems the hope trade
runs rampant all over the world. The largest
component of DXY, the euro, was basically flat for the
period, down (0.3%). The DXY falling as global
markets began to fret about lack of progress in U.S.
politics and sabre rattling in the Middle East and on
the Korean peninsula is intriguing given the dollar has
historically been the safe haven currency, but perhaps
times are a changing. Other Asian currencies also
surged as the president gave up on labeling China a
currency manipulator and the RMB rose 1%, while the
Korean won made back almost everything it lost in Q4
(another Q1 reversal), rising 8.1% and the Taiwan
dollar jumped 6.7%. Mr. Trump’s favorite whipping
boy, Mexico, starting hitting back in the growing trade
war posturing and the peso shocked everyone (well
everyone except a new macro fund we know led by a
former Brevan Howard PM who previously ran a
large macro book and the Argentina Fund; he was
super long with options and cleaned up) and surged
10.7% (reversing more than half of the past year’s
losses). Turkey’s President Erdogan continued to win
support for his constitutional changes and solidify his
power, so the lira fell an additional (3.1%) on top of its
(14.8%) loss from Q4. Turkey is starting to look
pretty interesting, as prices have fallen to very cheap
levels. After being forced to devalue the pound by
(51%) in Q4, Egypt stabilized and a number of our
favorite managers have been picking through the
rubble there to search for bargains. Our King Dollar’s
Last Stand Surprise is looking pretty solid so far in
2017, as the Brazilian real was up 4.2%, the Russian
ruble continued to pound the dollar, rising a very
strong 9.4% and even India got in on the fun as the
rupee jumped 4.9%.
We said last time that,
“currencies matter and in a world of political
uncertainty and volatility in which we seemingly have
plunged into, they will continue to matter even more
so being sure to have a sound hedging plan will be
critical to investment success,” and those words really
rang true in Q1.
Last fall we wrote about a trio of countries in the
EAFE Index that were largely ignored by investors
because they were relatively small, inextricably tied to
the commodity cycle and not well covered by research
houses and the media: Canada, Australia & New
Zealand (CAN for short). One of the common
characteristics of these markets is that they have
historically been inversely correlated to the dollar and
have been prone to episodic booms and busts
depending on the strength of the dollar relative to
their currencies. The correlation is so strong that the
CAN countries are often referred to as the
Commodity Countries and their currencies are
referred to as the Commodity Currencies. We wrote
about how that correlation to the dollar could hamper
returns saying, “There was one risk that we wrote
about last time which was that if a counter-trend rally
in the dollar were to occur there could be a pause in
their bull runs and these markets could struggle.” Q1
results for the CAN trio were mixed as there could
have been significant volatility given the weakness in
oil and gas prices, but that was partially offset by the
surprising weakness of the dollar which helped the
commodity currencies during the period. The TSX in
Canada rose a respectable 2.5%, Australia benefitted
from some strong economic momentum that began in
Q4 and surged 11%, and New Zealand recovered
somewhat from the (10.9%) drubbing in Q4 and
clawed back 2%. Despite the mixed results in Q1, the
CAN-do markets were solid investments over the past
year rising 14.8%, 21.1% and 8% respectively. We
continue to think that despite their small size, these
markets are worth paying attention to, because as we
wrote last time, “if a new Commodity Super Cycle has
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First Quarter 2017
begun (which we agree with (13D Research) that is
has) then these small markets will be big money
makers. Further, we believe the dollar has hit a
secular peak and will decline for many years to come
which should provide a tailwind for these countries
over the long-term.” Indeed, if our Surprise #7 (King
Dollar’s Last Stand) turns out to be right and the
unfolding structural changes in global currency
markets continue to put pressure on the USD, the
Commodity Country equity markets will punch well
above their weight in global equity indices in the alpha
generation category.
Last year, it seemed that just about every quarter an
event in Europe threatened the very existence of the
European Union, whether it was another crisis
(Greece), another referendum (Brexit) or another “do
or die” ballot initiative (Italy), there was no shortage
of excitement in the markets on the far side of the
pond. We wrote last quarter about the overarching
issues that were plaguing the Continent saying,
“Populism was on the rise, economies were
stagnating, leadership was disappearing (voluntarily
and involuntarily), the ECB was waffling (hinting
about tapering), the currency was struggling and
many observers and prognosticators were predicting
that the entire EU experiment was crumbling (not
really new idea, been talking about it since 2011).” The
uncertainty, volatility and surprises were too much for
investors in 2016 as the European equity markets
basically marked time and finished flat, but there was
a feeling that if things didn't actually blow up there
could be an element of coiled spring action in the New
Year. True to form, the MSCI Europe Index jumped
7.4% in Q1and the gains were widespread (there was
not a single Developed Market country with a
negative return in Q1). The best performing markets
in Europe were Spain, up a very robust 14.8%, Austria,
up a strong 9%, and Germany, up a solid 8.4% for the
quarter.
Even concerns about the impending
elections in France couldn't dampen investor
enthusiasm for European stocks as the French market
jumped 7.3% (it appears that Ms. Le Pen is not going
to win, so the worst case scenario for France is off the
table, for now). While 1.4% of the return for U.S.
dollar investors was from euro strength (USD
weakness), a 6% surge in equity returns in a quarter is
a welcome arrival after all the turbulence over the past
year. Laggards were in very short supply in Q1, but
Norway managed only a 1.4% gain, Ireland was up
3.8% and the U.K. gained 5% quarter. Over the
trailing twelve months, the leaders in Europe were
Austria (relief rally post-election), up 21.9%, Spain
(economic recovery), up 18.4% and Germany
(because it’s Germany), up 14.2%, which were all in
line with the best performers in Developed Markets
globally. The less fortunate EU members were
Denmark (rate moves), down (9.8%), Belgium
(politics), down (0.4%) and Ireland (Brexit fallout), up
a scant 0.6%. Mr. Draghi has been noticeably absent
in the past couple of quarters and we posited last
quarter that perhaps he is keeping his head down
because, “there is a growing chorus of people making
the case that Europe is recovering rapidly and that
inflation is surging to the point that not only will
Draghi have to taper, but he may have to raise rates
soon” and even Super Mario would not be immune to
the bullets that would be fired by global investors if he
were to take away the ECB punchbowl just as the
party was starting to get good again.
We ended the Europe section last quarter by saying
that we see, “signs of life in parts of the region, and we
do think there are pockets of opportunity to make
money in Europe … so it will be interesting to write
about the EU in the coming quarters.” Indeed there
was an opportunity in Q1 to capture a very strong
7.4% gain. That gain was a long time coming,
however, and we have discussed over the past year
that one of the primary differences between the U.S.
and Europe had been how QE had found its way into
stocks in the U.S., but not across the pond. We
summarized the dilemma last time saying, “the fact
remains that the Euro Stoxx 50 Index has not moved
up since the beginning of the ECB program (and is
actually down (13.7%) since the peak on April 2015
right after purchases began) and could not manage
any return again in 2016 despite large volumes of
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First Quarter 2017
bonds being purchased by the ECB.”
So despite
hundreds of billions of euros of QE, Super Mario was
unable to perform the levitation magic that QEeen
Janet had been able to produce in the States. We
believed that there should be a correlation between
QE and equities that was similar to the U.S. and we
had attempted to come up with our own version of
the TIS Group model to predict Euro Stoxx 50 moves,
but had been thwarted as the markets didn't want to
cooperate with the “for every 100B Euro of purchases
you get 20 Euro Stoxx 50 points” metric in 2016. The
ECB consistently bought $80B a month of bonds last
year and even extended the program from
government bonds to corporate bonds and it all
seemed for naught as the index didn't budge point to
point from the beginning to the end of the year (but
was quite volatile in between). We summarized our
frustration last quarter saying that the ECB “[had
increased their] Balance Sheet by $1.5T (yes, that is
Trillion) over last couple of years, stocks have gone
nowhere (but they have been volatile). Based on the
model and the expected ECB purchases, the Euro
Stoxx 50 Index should have risen around 200 points to
3500 from the starting point of 3,268 at the end of
2015.” It turns out we were only off by 91 days as the
Euro Stoxx 50 Index finished on March at 3,501. So
perhaps there is some lag in the system and the €180
billion of purchases in Q1 will produce returns in Q2
and we get those 36 Euro Stoxx points in the coming
months. We will keep our eye on the ECB for signs of
tapering, but for now there will continue to be some
tailwind of liquidity for European equity investors and
we will see if our model holds up better this year than
it did in 2016. We discussed an important point
about the whole issue of QE in the last letter saying,
“If the ECB can’t buy prosperity for Europe and
generate excess returns for European equity owners,
what will it take to get European equities back on
track? As we said above, it is likely to take a good oldfashioned economic recovery and better profits for
European businesses. The challenge is that these will
be lofty ambitions given the Killer Ds of poor
Demographics (10,000 people turn 65 every day in
Europe), too much Debt and the ongoing specter of
Deflation.” There were some hints of a recovery in
GDP growth on the Continent in Q1 and even some
signs of rising inflation early in the year that triggered
some “animal spirits” and were likely responsible for
the strong gains in stocks during the quarter. That
said, as the transitory impact of the oil price recovery
last year began to fade and CPI numbers began to roll
over, the Deflation bogeyman reemerged and
volatility returned to the Euro Stoxx 50 Index in April,
but the Index did jump 1.7% for the month to finish at
3,560 (so we got those 36 points from the Q1 QE in
April alone). Actually, European stocks were falling
swiftly in the first part of the month (down almost
(3%) in first three weeks) and all of the gains came
after the apparent defeat of Ms. Le Pen in France on
4/23, which triggered a ferocious two day rally (shortcovering) on the prospect that the EU was saved, but
if the hard data continues to come in less positive
there is potential for the fundamentals to swamp the
sentiment and technical momentum that emerged in
Q1.
Japan piled on the trend of Q1 being the anti-Q4 as
after what we described last time as truly spectacular
moves in equities and FX, the first quarter was very
boring for equity investors and only a little more
exciting for currency traders. As we said in the dollar
section, the USDJPY was up 5% (reversing about 40%
of the Q4 decline) and the Nikkei up nearly flat, down
(1%) in local currency, but hedging the ten proved
costly in Q1 as USD investors made 3.7% had they not
hedged their yen exposure (probably the bulk of
investors fit in this camp). After the scorching returns
in Q4, when the Nikkei rose nearly 15%, we expected
a pause that refreshes. We discussed last time how the
BOJ’s summer meeting had triggered what looked like
an important inflection point saying, “Importantly,
the momentum that was initiated by the BOJ
Comprehensive Review last fall became reflexive and
began what appears to be a virtuous cycle again.” We
expect that virtuous cycle to continue, but we also
appreciate that much of the moves in Japanese
equities will be dependent on the BOJ’s successful
efforts to keep weakening the yen. We wrote last time
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First Quarter 2017
that, “We are back in the Kuroda-san fan club, so
much so that Surprise #3 for this year is Kurve It Like
Kuroda and we are back in the Yen to 130, and the
Nikkei to 22,000, camp.” Q1 didn't help us much
toward those targets as the USDJPY slipped back to
111 and the Nikkei slipped back to 18,909, but a much
better April has pushed the Nikkei back to 19,197 (up
slightly from where is started the year at 19,114). As
we mentioned in the last letter, it should not go
unappreciated how powerful a move from the Trump
Election Day panic low this rise has been as the
Japanese index has surged 18.1% over the past six
months. To put that move in context, the S&P 500 is
up about 10% and even the hedged Japan ETF (DXJ)
is up 15%. The big mover has been Japanese
Financials, which are up 20% since the election. We
discussed last time how “the Megabanks finally began
to move in the last couple months of the year,” and
reiterated what we have said on multiple occasions —
that these banks were very attractive. The basket of
SMFG, MTU and MFG were up smartly in Q4, rising
12% on average, but again Q1 was the anti-Q4 and
SMFG fell (6%) while MTU and MFG managed to
gain 2% (and were roughly flat in April). There were a
few bright spots in Japan during the quarter. Sony
continued to shine and SNE surged 20% in Q1 on the
strength of product wins in camera sensors and some
hits in the entertainment business.
Softbank
continued on their global technology and telecom
shopping spree and SFTBY rose 7%. Trend Micro
(TMICY), the largest security software company in
Japan, soared 25%, as investors were frantic to buy
shares of companies that could help defend against
global cyber-warfare. Japan was in many ways like the
proverbial duck on the lake during Q1 as it appeared
calm and serene on the surface, but was furiously
churning underneath, as foreign investors continued
to sell, local investors (particularly the Government
Pension Fund) continued to buy, and there were a
number of sectors with some major losers (autos,
electronics, retail) and a few sectors with some major
winners (technology, healthcare), but, on average,
there wasn't much to write home about.
Emerging Markets were not supposed to be the best
performing markets in 2016 (but they were) and they
certainly weren’t supposed to be the best performing
markets in Q1 either (but they were) given all the fear
about rising Fed Funds rates (which they did in both
December and March) causing stress in the
developing world. We have discussed on many
occasions how Sir John Templeton always said that to
make the best returns you should look for markets
where there is great misery and George Soros quipped
often that, “The worse a situation becomes, the less it
takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.” A year
ago things were awfully miserable in EM and investors
were throwing in the towel and selling in droves, just
in time to miss a great run as growth surprised to the
upside and currency markets settled down after a
tumultuous 2015. We wrote last year that, “we had at
least begun to recognize that the depth of the bear
markets in these areas might be reaching an
exhaustion point,” and we began to rebuild positions
in EM as prices had reached very attractive levels. We
made some mistakes in terms of which regions we
were overweight and underweight as we based our
view on being positive the commodity consumers and
less positive on the commodity producers (since oil
prices had fallen so much), but as we wrote last
quarter, “In hindsight, we should have taken Soros not
just figuratively, but literally, as it was the B and the R
of BRIC where the most misery was and Brazil and
Russia trounced India and China in 2016.” Our
emerging markets-focused portfolios still had a great
year, rising double digits, but we left some money on
the table by focusing solely on fundamentals and not
paying enough attention to the huge sentiment and
momentum shift in the most beaten down markets.
The Emerging Markets recovery was in full swing over
the eight months leading up to the election and we
described what happened next in last quarter’s letter,
saying, “The [Emerging Markets] got sucker punched
and went to the mat hard, falling almost (10%) in a
couple of days. They tried to get up off the canvas in
the second half of November, but were hit again in
December when Janet really did raise rates and the
dollar surged. The old saying goes ‘you can’t keep a
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First Quarter 2017
good man down,’ and EM got back up in the last week
of the year and clawed back more than half the loss to
finish down (4.2%).” Like all the other markets we
have discussed thus far, Q1 was the anti-Q4 in EM as
well and the recovery rally was back on in 2017 as the
MSCI Emerging Markets Index was up a spectacular
11.4% for the quarter (nearly double an incredibly
strong S&P 500 return of 6.1%).
The first quarter was so strong in the developing
markets that the normal dispersion we see within the
EM Index nearly vanished and only three of the
twenty-five EM countries had negative returns.
Starting with those laggard markets, Russia was down
(4.6%) in USD as tensions with the U.S. rose and oil
prices were unstable during the quarter. Greece also
struggled during the quarter as concerns about
whether the Troika would provide debt relief or not
kept investors on their toes all quarter and the index
fell (3.5%). Sentiment has clearly improved of late, as
the IMF has made noises that they are on board with
the proposed plan and the Tsipras led government
seems to have made the necessary concessions to get
the third bailout and the Greek Index surged 11.3% in
April. The final laggard for Q1 was Hungary, which
barely counts as negative coming in at (0.6%) for the
quarter. Over the trailing twelve months, the worst
three markets were again examples of how bad
leadership destroys wealth as Turkey, the Czech
Republic and Egypt fell (16.6%), (4.5%) and (4.3%)
respectively (Americans should take note of how
leadership can impact equity markets). Repeating
something we wrote last fall, “the common thread
with these three is the poor leadership and we could
see continued weakness from these regions (and
others with poor quality leadership) in the coming
quarters. The rising Nationalism, Populism and
Protectionism trends are hurting global trade and if
those trends accelerate some of the Developing
Markets countries could suffer disproportionately.”
Forewarned is forearmed and should Developed
Markets’ leaders continue paths similar to the Terrible
Trio, our markets could suffer similar fates over the
coming years. It is always much more fun to talk
about the winners and the leaders for Q1 were Poland
(new leader getting better), India (strong leader
getting stronger) and South Korea (sketchy leader
being indicted), which surged 17.8%, 17.1% and 16.9%
respectively. Poland benefited from foreign buying
spurred by the Trump comments on foreign aid as
well as a stronger currency. India has seen an
incredible rebound from the nightmare in markets
induced by the surprise demonetization move last
year, and Prime Minister Modi gained more power in
recent elections. South Korea was a surprise in that
the travails of President Park might have been a
negative for many countries, but like with the
impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil
last year, investors are cheering the crackdown on
corruption at the highest levels of government. South
Korea was also helped by a very stiff tailwind in the
won strengthening and making up half of the equity
returns in USD. GMO Chairman and EM team leader
Arjun Divecha has taught us that, “You make the
most money when things go from truly awful to
merely bad,” and the Emerging Markets that have
jumped the most over the past year are great examples
of this. If you had asked anyone in early 2016 which
markets to avoid in EM, they would have quickly
named Brazil & Russia (and perhaps no one would
have said Peru), but these markets provided great
returns for investors surging 42.8%, 27.6% and 29.3%
respectively.
Taking a closer look at Russia, there are a fair number
of pundits and strategists that say Russia is not
investable and because of the concentration of power
around Putin, it is not a safe place for U.S. investors to
put capital. There are also a huge number of people
who think the Russians somehow tampered with the
U.S. election so they pile on the negativity toward
Russia as an investment destination as well. We have
a variant perception on Russia, as we believe the assets
there are very cheap, the markets are quite liquid and
the economy has been recovering well since the
trough in oil prices last February. In fact, we noted
last time that, “Russia was one of the best performing
markets in 1H16 and the positive returns continued in
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First Quarter 2017
the 2H as Russian equities surged on the surprise
election results in the U.S. and soared 54.8% for the
year (sounds pretty investable).” We went on to
discuss how our favorite managers in the region were
pounding the table on the attractiveness of the
opportunity, encouraging us to invest additional
capital and they were absolutely right. Fortunately we
did increase our exposure and we also allocated
additional capital to our EM best ideas portfolio
where one of the best performing stocks was Sberbank
(the largest Russian bank), which soared an
astonishing 100% for the year. In the three months
since we wrote the last letter, the Russian Bear went
back into hibernation (as the negative rhetoric around
Syria and election tampering increased) and RSX fell
(2%), while SBRCY was up 2% (for perspective EEM
was up 7.5% and SPX was up 4.5%). The one area that
did show some resilience (after a tough Q4) was retail,
as a couple of the leaders X5 and Dixie jumped 5%
and 7.5% respectively. Turning to the situation in
Turkey over the past year it has been amazing to
watch President Erdogan effectively create a power
structure very similar to Putin’s position in Russia.
With the latest vote to eliminate the position of Prime
Minister (even one upping Putin who still has to
manage the ceremonial PM, Dmitry Medvedev),
Erdogan has solidified his position in such a way that
there actually could be some positive momentum in
the economy and markets. We wrote in the Q2 letter
that, “some EM observers have been saying that
Turkey is beginning to look a lot like Russia during
the early phase of the sanctions and that stocks are
looking cheap,” but we felt it was still a little early and
indeed Q3 and Q4 were not good in the Turkish
equity markets. Last time we also discussed GMO’s
research that showed how countries with poorly
functioning institutions (read high levels of
corruption) underperform and wrote, “Their findings
showed that the better a country is at improving the
quality and effectiveness of their institutions, the
better the returns to shareholders (makes sense as
when there are good institutions there is less “leakage”
to the family majority owners). Arjun said that while
the quantitative models love Turkey (really cheap)
they are hesitant to buy since the QOI score is
collapsing (removing judges, jailing political rivals).”
Howard Marks has said that, “there are few assets so
bad that they can’t be a good investment when bought
cheap enough,” and perhaps Turkish equities hit that
level at the end of 2016 as TUR (Turkey ETF) was up
14% in Q1 and another 12% in April to be us a very
attractive 27% in 2017. Since we are on the topic of
uninvestable markets, Greece continues to be a place
where global investors fear to tread and fears about
the Troika debt relief deal breaking down rose sharply
in Q1. We have said in past letters that the banks
represent the best way to play Greece and that we
favored, “Alpha Bank, National Bank of Greece,
Eurobank & Piraeus, in that order of riskiness, as they
will be a leveraged play on the recovery.” Once again
Q1 was the anti-Q4 as the bank stocks crashed down
(12%), (4%), (12%) and (20%) after surging 28%, 27%,
35% and 55% respectively in Q4. Just to keep things
exciting, as news leaked that the IMF was leaning
toward a resolution in April, the banks rallied again,
jumping 16%, 28%, 19% and 15%, putting their CYTD
returns at 3%, 13%, 13% and (8%) respectively. We
are likely to get a final resolution of the bailout terms
in Q2, so we will likely be writing about some big
returns from Greece over the summer.
When it comes to China, we have marveled for many
years at the negativity toward the country and their
capital markets that emanates from the western press,
the western investment banks and western
governments. We summarized this issue last time,
saying that it seems that, “All global citizens seem to
suffer from a common affliction, Home Market
Myopia, which drives people to think that all the
smart people live where they live and all the great
investment opportunities are in their home market
(investors around the world are always overweight
their domestic market). Clearly neither of those
beliefs is true, but that doesn't stop us from believing
them.” That myopia is enhanced by the cultural
divide between the West and the East, fomented over
the past few decades by western media as the
economic, political and military power of China has
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First Quarter 2017
expanded. The real trouble (as we see it) stems from
the fact that China focuses on long-term planning and
execution and the western Developed Markets
continue to get increasingly more focused in the short
-term. Perhaps it is the advent of the Internet, social
media and ubiquity of information that is shortening
our attention spans and time horizons, but whatever
the reason the effect is that China seems to be playing
a different game than the rest of the world, they are
playing Go (an ancient Chinese strategy game of
incredible complexity) while the rest of us are playing
checkers. We said last time that these biases were
creating a problematic disconnect between beliefs and
reality, saying, “the balance of the world’s population
(particularly those in investments) continue to
struggle with the cognitive dissonance between the
popular narrative that China is due for a hard landing
any moment and the continued improvement in the
economic data.” If one were to simply listen to the
press and western social media it would appear that
China was on the verge of total societal collapse as
excess debt, poor financial institutions and corrupt
leadership drag the country into the abyss. Rather
than debate with the zealots, we suggested last time
that we, “go to the scoreboard (actual data) and see
where things stand.” The China bears say that the
majority of the China numbers are wrong (although
they offer no evidence of why they are wrong or what
the “right” numbers might be) and that despite the
fact that the numbers say the Chinese economy is
humming along (in fact, recently getting stronger),
they “know” that the wheels will come spinning off at
any moment. So let’s look at the numbers for Q1.
China macro data was the one place where the data
was not the opposite of Q4, but rather more of the
same positive trends. Chinese GDP grew a little faster
than expectations at 6.9% (unsurprisingly in the
communicated target zone of 6.5% to 7%). March
retail sales growth was a 10.9% yoy increase.
Manufacturing PMI is still firmly above 50
(expansion) at 51.2. Non-Manufacturing PMI is even
stronger, at 55.1 (perhaps the most important number
as China transitions toward a consumer economy).
Industrial Production expanded strongly, up a very
robust 7.6%. In order to maintain high levels of
growth, China must continually expand credit and
money supply and the PBoC continues keep the pedal
to the metal and M2 money supply growth was 10.6%
in the past year (on a 12% target). Both imports and
exports are growing very quickly and actually
accelerated dramatically over the past quarter, as
imports surged 20.3% and exports climbed 16.4%.
The relationship between these growth rates shows the
transition from “Made in China” to “Made for China”
that is underway as the Chinese economy transitions
and also shows why it will be very challenging for Mr.
Trump to wage a trade war with China now that U.S.
companies will benefit even more from open borders.
In the past few year one of the challenges for
corporate profits has been the persistent deflation in
China, but that trend has completely reversed and PPI
went from being negative last year to a positive 7.6%
today (actually was below zero for nearly five years).
Chinese equity markets struggle when the PPI is
negative and do well when PPI is positive, so the
current surge in PPI likely foretells positive returns in
Chinese equities in 2017.
Leaving the macro to look at the micro developments
for the beginning of 2017, we are right back to Q1
being the anti-Q4 as after a significant slump to close
out 2016 (in the aftermath of the EM sell off after the
surprise Trump victory) China equity markets surged
to erase the losses of the prior quarter. The MSCI
China Index was up sharply, rising 12.9% (after falling
(7.1%) last quarter), the MSCI Hong Kong Index
jumped 13.4% (versus a (9%) decline last period) and
the MSCI China A-Shares 50 Index managed a 6.2%
gain (versus a tiny loss of (0.8%) in Q4). For the
trailing twelve months, the returns are quite strong
with the indexes rising 19.7%, 16.6% and 8.5%
respectively. One of the important things about the
Chinese equity markets is that they remain very cheap
(even after these rallies) and we wrote last time how
“the steep correction in Q1 pushed P/E ratios in
China to silly levels and even with a 20% recovery
from the February bottom, valuations China continue
to be extremely attractive. History has shown that
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First Quarter 2017
investors with patient capital have been amply
rewarded when buying Chinese equities at these levels
(MSCI China P/E is 13X trailing and 11.4X forward).”
Even after the strong performance of the indices in
Q1, the MSCI China P/E is still only 15X and the
forward P/E is only 12.3X, in line with the MSCI EM
Index P/E levels of 14.9X current and 12.1X forward
earnings. The most compelling point is how attractive
China remains relative to the ACWI Global Index
where the P/E is 21.9X and the forward estimate is an
unattractive 16.3X.
We understand that many
investors have remained on the sidelines, fearing an
RMB devaluation that would wipe out any gains they
were able to capture in the equity markets. We
continue to believe that these fears are misguided and
that investors are missing out on a tremendous
investment opportunity in China today by listening to
the growling of the China bears. We said last time
that “the good news is that waiting for 2016 to pass
has not had a large opportunity cost (but we think
that is about to change in 2017),” and it appears from
the early results in the New Year that this
prognostication worked out pretty well in Q1. One of
the most important events for China in 2016 was the
inclusion of the RMB in the IMF’s SDR basket and we
believe that this inclusion makes the goal of currency
stability even more critical to achieve. We were
adamant last year that there would not be a
meaningful depreciation of the yuan in 2016 or 2017
and actually laid out a thesis presented by GMO at
their annual meeting in October that supported that
premise. We wrote about the two pillars of the thesis
in the Q3 letter, “1) fears of the NPLs in the banking
system were unfounded because SOEs (manufacturers
and banks) are on both sides of many of the loans
(one as liability and one as asset) so they cancel out
(so require no bailout that would drain FX reserves)
and 2) President Xi would not allow such a significant
event in advance of the 19th National Party Congress
in 2017, as he has too much at stake in his plans to
consolidate power.” We also touched on the point last
time that a number of the managers we met with in
Hong Kong in January said the RMB was actually
more likely to strengthen than weaken in 2017 (a truly
variant perception) due to the trade balances that
favored the RMB over the dollar. The currency is
likely to be very stable ahead of the Party Congress so
the 1% rise in Q1 probably doesn't have much
information content and is actually more about dollar
weakness than yuan strength. Looking at the industry
groups we like for the long-term (as China transitions
toward consumption) and which have been
overweight in our portfolios -- e-Commerce,
Healthcare and Retail -- the returns over the past year
have been quite volatile, but outstanding overall.
Going back to the Q4 results for a moment illustrates
the point. We wrote, “Q4 was not pretty in China as
FXI was down (9%), EWH fell (12%), ASHR dropped
(5%), HK:1515 (Phoenix Healthcare) tumbled (28%),
HK:700 (Tencent) dropped (12%), JD was down (2%),
VIPS skidded (25%) and BABA dropped (17%).” As
you might expect, Q1 was the inverse as most of these
names surged on the prospect of higher growth and
rising profits with the index ETFs FXI, EWH and
ASHR up 10%, 12% and 5% respectively, the eCommerce companies Tencent, JD, VIPS and BABA
jumping 17%, 20%, 18% and 22% respectively and the
only laggard was Phoenix Healthcare which was flat.
As great as these returns are (and have been) we are
actually finding even more compelling opportunities
in these three sectors in the private markets and we
are organizing a fund dedicated to taking advantage of
these emerging growth companies.
Frontier Markets had a difficult year in 2016 as the
MSCI FM Index rose only 2.7%, but like most
averages of a very disparate group of things (it’s tough
to get more varied than the collection of countries in
the FM Index), there were some incredibly strong
performers and some completely terrible performers.
Q1 was much different than last year and the MSCI
FM Index jumped a very healthy 8.9% to bring the
TTM return to a respectable 12.1%. Within the index
there were nine countries that surged more than 10%
during the quarter and the top three that soared more
than 20%. Bahrain was up 24.8% during the quarter
as the oil price recovery trickled down into Middle
Eastern corporate earnings. Kazakhstan had a similar
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First Quarter 2017
tailwind and was up 27.9%. The big winner (and one
of our favorite markets over the last two years) was
Argentina, which screamed higher, rising 34.8%, as
excitement grew about Macri Administration policies,
the recession grew less severe and anticipation of the
MSCI Index inclusion attracted more foreign capital.
Argentina has been an amazing story over the past few
years as they have transitioned from a country
trapped in the past being exploited by a despot, to a
rising star in the international community trying to
recapture their position of prominence from a century
ago. While the index returns have been very strong,
there have been a number of individual companies
that have had even more powerful runs that we have
discussed on many occasions in the pages of these
letters in past quarters. PAM (electric utility), BMA
(bank), GGAL (bank) and YPF (oil) make up a Fab
Four that had a simply spectacular Q1, rising a
stunning 50%, 25%, 34% and 40% respectively.
Perhaps the primary reason that Argentina has been
such a great place to invest in recent years is the
market has not been crowded. We described why
investors were not participating in Argentina last
winter, saying, “Fears about past defaults, currency
devaluations and corruption have made global
investors skittish about re-engaging with Argentina.
However, there was a silver lining in the reluctance of
global investors to come back quickly to Argentina as
it has extended the investment opportunity (so far, so
good) and we expect to see meaningful opportunities
to make excess returns in this market for many years
to come.” Another benefit (that many would see as a
drawback) is that the global capital markets had been
closed to Argentinian corporations for a long time so
the equitization of the country (total equity market
cap divided by total GDP) was only 13%, which
translates into a situation where there are just not that
many options for investors. We have said before (and
basic economics confirms) that excess demand and
limited supply is a recipe for rising stock prices.
Despite all the positive things going on in Argentina
last year, the Trump victory in November sent shock
waves across all Emerging and Frontier Markets and
the land of the Tango was not immune to the risk-off
move and the Merval fell (12.2%) in Q4, setting up Q1
perfectly for the spectacular outcome that ensued.
Perhaps one of the funniest things to observe as a
global investor is how the masses view all countries in
a particular region the same way. So, when PresidentElect Trump threatened Mexico all South American
countries fell in sympathy despite the fact that any
actions against Mexico would not harm (and in many
cases would help) other LatAm countries. Just to
close the Q1 chapter on Argentina, we wrote in the Q3
letter that PAM was, “our favorite stock (in fact I
tweeted in July of 2015 if forced to own one stock for
the next five years this would be it),” and since then
PAM has soared 300% while the SPX is up 15% and
the ARGT (Argentina ETF) is up 45%. Viva
Argentina!
Unlike last year when making money in the Frontier
Markets was all about finding the few countries that
did well during a challenging market environment,
during Q1 twenty-two of the thirty countries were up
and over the past year twenty-one produced solidly
positive results. Over the trailing year, the same three
countries ruled the Frontier, but in a slightly different
order than in Q1, as Kazakhstan was up 40.1%,
Bahrain was up 31.6% and Argentina was a close 3rd at
up 30.5%. One other country outside the top three
that deserves some attention is Ukraine, which stood
out last year as one of the Templeton Misery Index
candidates (along with Brazil in EM) where things
looked so dark a year ago that it was very likely they
would be good places to search for investment value.
Sir John was constant in his insistence that investors
steer clear of opportunities that everyone is flocking
toward (consensus) and to seek out those places where
no one wants to go (variant perception). Ukraine fit
that bill and investors with courage were rewarded
handsomely in Q1 as the market surged 17.9% to
bring the TTM return to 26%. Buying what is on sale
has always been a good money making strategy and
Lord Rothschild told us that the best time to buy is
when, “the blood is running in the streets,” but that
said, there are very few investors (including ourselves)
with the courage to consistently run towards markets
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First Quarter 2017
where real bullets are flying and real blood is flowing.
We did own a little Ukrainian debt through one of our
favorite specialty EM managers, but we can’t take
credit for being brave enough to go bargain hunting in
the Ukraine last year. We have written on numerous
occasions about the MSCI Index inclusion trade that
tends to have a dramatic impact on EM and FM
markets and discussed a few countries that were up
for inclusion last time, saying, “the real story for
Pakistan and Vietnam may develop in 2017 as they are
both candidates for inclusion in the MSCI EM Index
and history shows that markets included in the Index
rise between 60% and 120% in the year leading up to
the actual inclusion (see UAE, Qatar and Dubai as
recent examples).” We found out last quarter that
MSCI affirmed their decision to move Pakistan into
the EM Index and the equity market in Pakistan
surged 16.2% in Q4 and was up 40.4% in 2016. We
also learned that they decided not to include Vietnam,
which proceeded to drop (10.4%) in Q4, erasing
earlier gains and finished down (7.8%) in 2016. As we
noted the power of index creators, “There could be
great news for Argentina and China A-Shares as they
are both up for inclusion in May, but bad news (the
hits just keep coming) for Nigeria, as they will be
removed from the FM Index this year.” In Q1 the
Inclusion Club had mixed results, Pakistan took a
pause and was down (2.1%), while Vietnam made
back the losses from Q4, rising 10.1% (perhaps
someone knows something about MSCI changing
their mind again), Argentina was clearly great, China
A-Shares were up only 6.2% (likely going to have to
wait another year) and Nigeria was flat, up 0.4%, as
the bad news was already in the stock from the 2016
drop.
We have previously discussed one other country that
to be up for inclusion in 2017, and wrote last time that
Saudi Arabia, “has been rumored to be included in the
EM Index in 2017 and we believed this was one of a
number of tailwinds that were creating tremendous
opportunity for investors in the Saudi market in the
coming year.” One of the reasons for the belief in the
Saudi inclusion (despite no indication from MSCI)
was the sudden, sharp rally in Q4 as the Tadawul
Index surged 27%, which converted a difficult (13%)
loss through 9/30 into a respectable 10.3% gain for the
full year. Some doubt crept into our collective minds
in Q1 as Saudi stocks consolidated their huge Q4
gains and the index fell (1.2%) during the period, but
there continue to be some positive signals from the
MSCI group as they have visited with Saudi officials
multiple times in recent months. We wrote last time
how, “There is still plenty of skepticism about whether
Saudi Arabia can emerge from being an oil dependent
Kingdom to become a modern global economy, but
there are positive signs emerging. The largest positive
sign is their plan to take parts of ARAMCO (the Saudi
oil company) public and use the proceeds to create a
vehicle for funding the projects that will be necessary
to create a new future for Saudi Arabia.” During Q1
there were reports of significant progress in the
ARAMCO stock offering and there are valuations
being bandied about of over $1 trillion (some say that
is down from original estimates, but it still would be
the largest company and IPO ever). Sometimes the
problem with a big event, like MSCI inclusion, is that
it diverts attention away from other developments in
the market that in many cases are equally if not more
important. Such is the case with Saudi Arabia today,
as all eyes are on MSCI, the Kingdom has stabilized its
budget with a recent debt issuance (which was
significantly oversubscribed), the recovery in oil prices
has bolstered the government budget and the youthful
leadership of the country has rekindled confidence
and enthusiasm that has become palpable in the
markets. We discussed last quarter how, “After a
couple of years of being overrun by the bears, the bulls
have taken over in Saudi Arabia, and the positions we
built in our portfolios last summer have been
beneficiaries of the surge in positive momentum.
Given how little foreign capital is invested in Saudi
Arabia, the bulls could be loose for a while and should
MSCI give the green light for inclusion in the EM
Index there will be a mad dash into Riyadh.” On the
other hand, a no vote from MSCI would be a shortterm blow for the Saudi markets, but the margin of
safety in many of the core companies (which sell at
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First Quarter 2017
meaningful discounts to their global peers) offers
some downside protection. We have positioned our
portfolios to benefit from a run in Saudi stocks, but we
believe that we can wait a little longer to see the actual
outcome as we will be able to move faster than those
starting from scratch should the inclusion decision in
June be a favorable one.
The Q1 story in fixed income was similar to the Q1
story in equities and while the Trump Bump (rally) in
equity markets faded in early 2017, the Trump Thump
(bruising) in bond markets faded as well. We
observed last quarter that, “What is interesting is how
quickly the narrative changed from Deflation to
Inflation and the threat of negative interest rates to the
end of the bond bull market.” The energy supporting
that narrative faded in Q1 as U.S. interest rates fell
marginally with the 10-year Treasury moving from
2.45% to 2.39% and the 30-year moving from 3.1% to
3%. All the media talking heads crowing about how
the Trump trifecta was going to stimulate massive
GDP growth (contrary to the simple math that shows
GDP is almost certainly going to be sub-2% in 2017)
and trigger a reflationary wave that would crush bond
investors went really quiet as the quarter progressed.
The administration’s spokespeople (Spicer, Mnuchin
& Cohen) keep flapping their jaws about how all of
the Trump plans were going to energize the economy
and markets and while the equity markets bought the
story for two-thirds of the quarter, the bond markets
were having none of it. If equities deal in dreams and
bonds deal in realities, then the direction of Treasury
yields was a great indicator that GDP growth was
going to disappoint in Q1 (it did, coming in at 0.7%
versus an original estimate of 3.5% in January) and
that bond market returns might not be as poor as
everyone was saying they would be. The other
indicator that was important to pay attention to, the
net short position of speculators betting against
bonds, was at all-time highs (always a contrarian
signal) and it was likely that rates were due for a turn
back down. We referenced the great work of Raoul
Pal of the Global Macro Investor letter last quarter
saying that the “Chart of Truth” is the 10-yr Treasury
bond and the trend is down until such time as the
yield passes the previous cycle high, saying, “Further,
until such time as the 10-year breaks above that 3.01%
level, the current trend is still down. We continue to
side with Van Hoisington and Lacy Hunt who believe
that the secular low in rates is ahead of us, rather than
behind us.” Q1 reversed a little bit (about twenty
percent) of the damage done to bondholders as the
Barclay’s Aggregate Index rose 0.8% for the period
and the Barclay’s Long Treasury Index rallied 1.4%.
For some perspective on the long end of the curve, at
the beginning of July last year, TLT (a long bond ETF)
was up 20.5% while the S&P 500 was up 3.8% and
bonds were thumping stocks (contrary to the
consensus pundit view for 2016), but by election week
that gap had closed to TLT up 9.5% and S&P up 5.8%
and then, boom, the bottom fell out for bonds and
TLT finished the year up 1.4% and the S&P rallied all
the way to up 12%. The Trump Thump trend
continued for most of Q1 (right up to the day before
the Fed meeting in March) as SPX was up 5% and
TLT was down (2.5%), but then the failure to pass the
AHCA caused market participants to doubt the
timing of the Trump trifecta and TLT surged and SPX
fell through Tax Day (4/18) and TLT actually
overtook SPX, up 4% to up 3.5%, before the
Administration leaked more Hopium into the markets
saying they would release their tax reform plan (which
turned out to be a one page memo light on details and
heavy on wish list items that have little chance of
passing) and SPX regained the lead, up 5.5% to up
2.5% at the end of April. We stand by our call that
TLT will beat SPX for 2017 and it will be very
interesting to watch the battle during coming
quarters.
Continuing to add fuel to the “End of the Bond Bull
Market Narrative,” the Fed raised rates another 25
basis points at their March meeting (on top of the 25
basis point increase in December), but curiously the
10-year yield actually peaked two days later and has
fallen over the past two months. We said earlier that
we would let the roller coaster analogy rest, but we
need it pull it out of retirement to describe the bond
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markets in 2017. Curiously, 10-year yields peak
around the day of the Fed hike and then proceed to
fall to lower lows until the rumor of the next hike.
The TBondcoaster looked like this with yields hitting
2.6% on 12/15 (Fed meeting), careening down to 2.3%
on 1/17, hitting a whoop-de-do back up to 2.5% on
2/15, falling back down to 2.3% on 2/24, riding the
chain lift back up to 2.63% on 3/14 (day before Fed
meeting), swooshing back down to 2.18% on 4/18 and
then some Administration jawboning pushed them
back to 2.28% on 4/28. Two rate hikes, lots of
Trumponomics claims and Treasury yields fall more
than 30 basis points since mid-December (another
thing that makes you go “hmmm…”), someone didn't
get the “Reflation is back, the Bond Market is Dead”
memo. We have discussed why we think the Fed
moving forward with raising rates is a mistake saying,
“We say ill-advised because all the economic data that
we see is pointing to a fairly serious slowdown in
economic activity and it appears to us that a
tightening of liquidity would be a policy error at this
point.” The bond market seems to agree with this
perspective as the yield curve steepening that was
supposed to be a sure thing (and was a key component
of the case for why Financials were screaming
upwards) has not only not materialized, but instead
has gone the other way (Bank stocks gave up almost
all their gains for the quarter after the 3/15 hike). 30year Treasury yields are also down from 3.18% back in
mid-December to 2.95% today despite 50 basis points
of Fed hikes. We talked last time about one of our
favorite managers in London who has a spectacular
long-term track record and was very heavily weighted
in long bonds in Q4 and got pounded as they shed
(11.7%) during the Trump Thump. We wrote last
time that, “he remains steadfast that the economic
data will continue to disappoint and the Fed will be
forced to reverse course in 2017.” With the first
quarter GDP data being so horrible, retail sales falling
two months in a row and the Citi Economic Surprises
Index literally falling off a cliff in March, it appears
that he may turn out to be right. We outlined our
position on the Fed and bonds last quarter saying,
“The Fed Dot Plot (and broad consensus on Wall
Street) says they will raise rates four times in 2017 and
that it will be a bad year for bond investors. We will
take the under on the number of rate hikes and will
take the contrarian position that bonds will
outperform stocks as volatility rises and bonds again
serve as a safe haven trade at some point during the
year.” Given that the Fed surprised us in March (we
thought there would be no hikes until December
again) some would say we have no chance on the
under four forecast, but we will see. As things get
dicier in the economy it will take serious commitment
on the Fed’s part to go through with additional hikes,
so perhaps it will simply be the timing changed, but
the number will still be low. On the second part of the
forecast, if the economy really does slow and markets
begin to really struggle, long bonds will once again
become the safe haven trade and protect investors if
we end up headed down the road to Hooverville.
Switching to the global bond markets, we talked last
quarter about how we thought it was interesting to
watch President Xi quote Dickens at Davos to defend
the assault on globalization during 2016, saying, “it
was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” We
provided the rest of the Dickens quote saying, “it was
the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was
the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,”
and we said that this quote aptly describes the actions
of the bond markets around the globe. We also wrote
that, “investors had left the age of wisdom (must be
paid to lend money to a government) and plunged
headlong into the age of foolishness (actually paying
governments to hold their money, negative interest
rates) based on being ensconced in an epoch of belief
in the omnipotence of Central Bankers since the
depths of the Global Financial Crisis that suddenly
turned to an age of incredulity as some bond investors
began to awaken from their stupor.” Actually the
most important age today is the age of financial
repression when central bankers have artificially held
interest rates down in order to encourage speculative
activity and hopefully trigger a wealth effect. The
problem is that the transmission mechanism in the
economy is broken since there is so much leverage
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already in the system there is little demand or
additional credit (bank loan origination crashed in
Q1). So the low rates just end up punishing savers
and rewarding the Banksters who lever up by
borrowing from the Fed and buying risk-free bonds at
a spread. So there were a few bond investors who
awoke from their zombie slumber and sold bonds in
Q4 causing global yields to rise and the Barclay’s
Global Bond Index to fall (7%) in Q4 (wiping out
nearly the entire 2016 gain earned in the previous
nine months), but financial repression forced many
investors back into a sleep-walking state of yield
chasing and global bond yields rolled over and the
index rose 2.5% in Q1. Granted some of that return
was actually dollar weakness, but there was definitely a
sense that the reflation narrative was losing its luster
and that some yield now was better than no yield later.
Using the roller coaster analogy (we promise for the
last time) the European rides were gut-busting, vomit
inducing terror tracks in Q1, as the volatility was
simply unbelievable. The German Bundercoaster (10year Bund) has been a thrill a minute in 2017 as the
Bund entered the year at 0.21% (the decimal point is
in the right place), but caught the Trump Track
upward in January cresting up almost 1.3X higher at
0.48% (doesn't seem like a big move, but investors can
make huge returns in the futures markets due to the
embedded leverage) on 1/26, then careened down the
hill to a lower low at 0.19% on 2/24, ratcheted right
back up to 0.49% by 3/10, screamed down to an even
lower low (notice the trend) at 0.16% on 4/18 and
coasted back up the final hill into the starting house at
0.32% on 4/28. These are simply crazy moves over the
course of four months, but such is life in the
amusement park that the global markets have become.
The BTPcoaster in Italy had a similar nausea inducing
ride path careening up and down from 1.8% to begin
the year to a peak of 2.4% twice on 2/6 and 3/10 and
troughs of 2.1% on 2/28 and 3/29 before finally
settling in at 2.3% at the end of April. The
GILTcoaster in the U.K. was a bit less bumpy, but
there was one blood curdling drop from 1.52% on
1/26 to 1.08% a month later on 2/24. But over the
course of the four months it only moved from 1.24%
to 1.09%. The OATScoaster in France was fairly wild
as well given the political gyrations surrounding the
election, but the moves were slightly less exaggerated
and the overall direction of yields was higher
(perception of greater risk due to uncertainty) and
yields rose from 0.69% on 12/30 to 1.12% on 3/20 only
to finish at 0.84% on 4/28. Perhaps the ride we should
all be most concerned about is the Samuraicoaster in
Japan where JGBs had fought back from negative
interest rates to begin the year at 0.05% (yes a measly
5 basis points, but it is positive…) to a high of 0.12%
on 2/2 only to plunge down the hill back toward NIRP
land and hit 0.01% on 4/17 before bouncing slightly
off that bottom to eke out another basis point by the
end of April to finish at 0.02%. The fact that JGBs are
flirting with negative numbers again is a sign that
deflation is rearing its ugly head again and the
reflation trade may be turning into just another hope
trade and you know how we feel about those. Hope is
not an investment strategy. We wrote last time that,
“we continue to hear about how this recent move in
rates in the “End of the 35 year bond bull market” and
we even wrote in Q3 that “there is a rising cacophony
that this time is the big one” and everyone says that
foreign government bonds are the short of a lifetime,
but we contend that until we surpass the 0.92% 2015
high on the Bund, the downward trend remains
intact.” The Bundercoaster got a little over half way
there, but the series of three lower lows is very
concerning as those types of events are strong
indicators that the primary trend in yields is down.
Let’s review our checklist of criteria to see if we can
determine the likely path of global rates. In other
words, what has changed in a positive direction that
would cause rates to increase? First, is European and
German GDP growth better? Not really, EU GDP is
stalled at 0.4% and German GDP has fallen back
slightly to 0.4% as well, the same level as a year ago.
Second, has European inflation emerged? EU CPI
definitely jumped last year from 0.2% in June to 1.8%
in January, but now has stalled at 1.8% for four
months, as it appears that much of that rise was a
transitory impact of the recovery in oil prices and will
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now reverse. Third, are European politics stable and
supportive of better growth? Clearly we would have to
say that rising protectionism and nationalism are
growth negatives and given the fact that we are still
talking about the EU breaking up (albeit less with
Macron emerging victorious over Le Pen in France),
that can’t really be considered a tail wind. Fourth,
have European demographic trends improved? The
answer to this one is an emphatic no as Europe still
has a rapidly aging population and the antiimmigration rhetoric makes the trends even worse.
Fifth, are European banks extremely healthy and
rapidly growing new loans? There is some light at the
end of the tunnel on this one as the banks have
recapitalized and they are attempting to make loans, it
is just that loan demand is challenging. We clearly
don't have an abundance of yeses here, but there are
some positive signs in the EU that may support
somewhat higher global bond yields. That said, we
repeat what we said last time that, “We still lean
toward the Hoisington thesis that the final trough in
global bond yields is ahead of us, but we won’t fight
the data in the short run.”
We said last time that we were running out of
superlatives to describe the credit markets so we
borrowed the speed continuum from the movie Space
Balls movie as high yield markets had gone from
Insane to Ludicrous last year and were now
approaching Maximum Plaid (the highest speed
indicator on the space ship throttle). We noted just
for fun that, “Elon Musk of Tesla is also a fan of Space
Balls as he has two modes for his Model S cars, Insane
Mode (0-60 mph in 3.2 seconds) and Ludicrous Mode
(0-60 mph in 2.8 seconds) and has hinted that in the
new roadster there would be a Maximum Plaid
Mode.” One of the conundrums in the high yield
space is that the adjective high doesn't seem
appropriate any more as junk bond yields have
collapsed from 6.2% to end last year to 5.65% today.
Just for the record, there is a reason they are called
junk bonds – many of them finance really bad
businesses and don't actually pay the money back.
The idea of lending money to companies that may not
have the capacity (or willingness) to pay it back and
only extracting mid-single digit returns as
compensation seems suspect at best and unintelligent
at worst. Some might make the argument that the
origination of the actual loans is at a higher rate and it
is the crush of money from institutions and
individuals desperate for yield that pushes the price of
the bonds up (and yields down), so the yield of the
index doesn't reflect the true underwriting risk
analysis. While we are sympathetic to that argument,
we repeat what we said last quarter when we quoted
Dark Helmet (parody character of Darth Vader in
Space Balls played by Rick Moranis) when he says,
“‘‘what have I done? My brains are going into my
feet!’” which is exactly what it seems to us that would
be required to buy high yield bonds here.” That said,
the bulk of investors don't agree and they kept buying
Not So High Yield (NSHY) bonds during Q1 and the
Barclay’s High Yield Index rose another 2.7% (which
puts the trailing twelve-month return at an eyepopping 16.4%). NSHY has been oblivious to
fundamentals slowing down in other markets and
spreads keep tightening due to the global grab for
yield. This caused Option Adjusted Spreads (OAS) to
collapse from 4.22% at the end of Q4 to 3.92% on 3/31
and they fell further in April, reaching a stunning
3.78% (remember this is the spread to risk-free
Treasurys). We discussed last time that, “The most
ludicrous thing that has happened is that the junkiest
company bonds have become the most prized and
CCC rated bonds (remember they are rated CCC
because 50% default within four years) are well into
Maximum Plaid speed and surged more than twice as
much as the HY Index, soaring a truly astonishing
36.5% in 2016.” A reasonable investor might assume
that buying bonds with a 50% chance of getting paid
back is a rather risky undertaking and that as prices
surged and yields plunged taking that risk becomes
less attractive (not more). But despite falling yields,
investors couldn't get enough CCCs in Q1 and pushed
the index up another 5.2%. One point to ponder here
is that the monster return in the HY market last year
places 2016 as the third best in two decades. Given
that the first and second best years were 2009 and
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First Quarter 2017
2003 when the economy was recovering from big
recessions and huge defaults, perhaps it is possible
that there was a stealth recession in 2015/2016 (would
have been right on schedule in the normal business
cycle) but it was just never called. When we go back
and look at the massive spike in yields in February of
last year when the HY index got to 8.9% (and CCCs
were well above 20%), some of the recent returns seem
more appropriate.
Our MCCM Surprise #9 is titled Willie Sutton was
Right and refers to his famous response to being asked
why he robbed banks, “that's where the money is,”
which we use to explain our affinity for Emerging
Markets - that's where the growth is (and ultimately
the money as they are the creditors to the overindebted Developed Markets). As we continually
survey the global landscape for investment
opportunities we have discussed previously the
significant development in the quality and depth of
the markets for Emerging Markets debt and the
evidence over the past few years of the asset class even
taking on some of the role of safe haven during crises.
One might logically ask how that is possible given the
Western perception that EMD is simply debt issued
by a bunch of banana republics to fund infrastructure
projects where the proceeds are stolen by corrupt
dictators and the bonds eventually default. My how
times have changed. Today, the vast majority of EMD
issuers are very high quality companies and the
governments, in most cases, are in meaningfully better
financial condition than their DM counterparts, so the
risk in EMD has fallen dramatically over the years. To
push this point further, when comparing EMD headto-head with DM HY it would be a challenging case to
make that there was not better value and upside in
EMD. When going toe-to-toe with DM sovereign
debt it would be nothing like the Thrilla in Manilla
(Ali vs. Frazier III, won by Ali in 14 rounds) and
much more like Once and For All (Tyson vs. Spinks,
won by Tyson in 91 seconds) as the upside/downside
is far better in EMD than DM sovereign debt. We
talked last quarter about how EMD was chugging
along during 2016, up 12.8% for the first three
quarters, before Donald Trump sucker punched
emerging markets with a Tweetstorm of threats
against Mexico and China and EM equities. The
Tweets caused EMD to hit the mat hard in Q4, and
many said they were down for the count. Being firmly
in the EM corner, we had a different perspective and
wrote that, “given our view that the Trump Bump in
the dollar will be short-lived (has actually almost fully
reversed in January), we remain more bullish on EMD
than other forms of debt as there is higher growth,
better cash flows, lower leverage and higher average
quality across these markets versus the Developed
Markets.” Champions drag themselves up off the mat,
dust themselves off and come out swinging, and EMD
showed the heart of a champion in Q1, as the
JPMorgan EM Bond Index surged 3.9% during the
quarter (more than erasing the (2.6%) loss in Q4),
bringing the trailing year return to 8.8%. EM
corporate bonds performed well too with the
JPMorgan CEMBI rising 3%, but the heavyweight
champ in Q1 was the local currency sovereign debt
where EM FX rocked King Dollar back on its heels
and the JPMorgan GBI-EM surged 6.5% (3% of that
coming from FX gains). The primary reason we favor
EMD in the current environment is that we are
comfortable holding the assets because we believe they
are reasonably priced and we aren’t stretching to buy
low quality assets to achieve a desired yield. We
discussed the danger of the global yield grab last time
saying “The problem with any investment decision is
when you shift from buying an asset that you feel is
undervalued or has substantial investment income to
generate return to a decision to buy an overvalued
asset because you expect some “greater fool” will pay
an even higher price in the future, you move from the
realm of investment to speculation.” There are clearly
plenty of greater fools in the markets today willing to
keep paying prices well above fair value for assets of
all types, but we prefer to focus on finding assets at or
below fair value. In the liquid debt markets, that
means focusing on EMD over NSHY and traditional
fixed income and that said, we will repeat our advice
from last time that, “we would favor other forms of
income oriented assets over all of these and would
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First Quarter 2017
rather focus on BDCs and MLPs for more consistent
cash flow and lower risk of capital loss in the event
that interest rates do actually rise,” (we still think
rising rates are unlikely, but when you get a free
hedge, take it).
When looking at the yield related assets, particularly
the REITs & MLPs, it is likely safe to assume that most
investors believe these assets generate similar returns
(since “yield is yield”) and we will admit there is some
logic in thinking that both asset types would rise and
fall in a similar fashion as interest rates move. What
we have observed over the past couple of years is that
this assumption breaks down (sometimes quite
dramatically) as we discussed in the Q3 letter saying,
“not all yield assets are created equal; different
structures, different leverage levels, and different
underlying asset quality “should” produce different
return streams. The problem lies in those times when
investors ignore all the differences and simply buy the
yield of what they consider to be comparable assets
(REITs and MLPs).” The differences were abundantly
clear again in Q1, as REITs were flat (caught between
the hope of better growth and the threat of rising
rates) while MLPs rose with recovering oil prices (and
rising drilling activity and production volumes). The
S&P U.S. REIT Index was up a scant 0.6%, while the
Alerian MLP Index rose a hearty 4%. When we look
at the trailing one-year numbers, the disparity is even
more pronounced with REITs up just 2.6%, while
MLPs soared 28.3%. Before we get too excited and
declare that MLPs are far superior to REITs remember
that over two years the numbers are 3.4% vs. (6.5%),
over three years 9.9% vs. (5.2%) and over five years
9.7% vs. 2.6% (that little hiccup in late 2015 caused a
capital loss that erased many years of income). We
wrote a few quarters ago that, “the most impressive
thing about REITs is that, interestingly, they have
outperformed equities over nearly all trailing periods
during the past twenty years, so perhaps there is
something to this yield construct after all.” How
quickly things change. The S&P 500 has now regained
the lead over REITs in all but one of the trailing
periods over the past twelve years (the eight year
period off the 2009 bottom) and while REITs
dominate most of the trailing periods out to twentyfive years, the gap has nearly closed, as for the quarter
century REITs compounded at 10.9% while the S&P
500 grew at 10.3% per year (maybe REITs really are
stocks rather than real estate after all). Sixty basis
points doesn't seem like much, but due to the magic of
compounding, $1 invested in REITS would have
grown to $1.90 more ($13.40 vs $11.50) than $1
invested in stocks over the period (real money). We
wrote in Q3 that, “we can’t help but feel that this is
not a particularly good time to put new capital to
work in REITs as it is beginning to feel a little like
2007 (when we made a lot of money for clients going
short REITs along with short Subprime) where
investors seem to be willing to pay any price for real
estate related assets. When the margin of safety
disappears, usually forward returns disappear.” We
followed that up last time with a discussion of the
myriad “headwinds for many property types like office
(shrinking working age population) and malls
(AMZN road kill) and we could point to the crazy
valuations in multi-family as supporting evidence for
why to avoid this particular yield asset, but we will
keep it short and sweet and say that the risk/reward is
unattractive and there are plenty of better places to
deploy capital (although we can’t help but think
shorting mall REITs like SPG, GGP and MAC is a
really good idea).” Since we penned those words three
months ago, the REIT Index was able to eke out a
small gain of 2.5%, but SPG, GGP and MAC got
smacked, falling (10%), (13%) and (9%) respectively,
looking like #AMZNRoadKill indeed.
Coming back to the MLPs, with the Alerian Index
jumping 4% in Q4. MLPs continue to be not only the
best yield asset, but nearly the best total return asset
over the past year as only small-cap value stocks (with
the tailwind of hope on tax reform) had a higher
return and that margin of victory was slim at 29.4%
vs. 28.3%. We got excited about commodities and
MLPs in Q1 of last year as it appeared the bear market
that began in 2011 was finally nearing a crescendo and
the destruction that had come to the MLP market in
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the wake of the collapse of oil prices in late 2014
appeared to have reached a nadir. All of that said, we
have discussed many times the perils of trying to catch
falling knives and our preference (learned from the
experience of losing a few fingers along the way) to let
them hit the ground and come to rest before picking
them up by the handle. We wrote last time that MLPs
followed this pattern in 2016 saying, “but then the
knives actually did hit the ground, they did bounce
around a bit and they did actually come to rest
allowing smart value investors to make “generational”
purchases. In February prices got so low that
investors were discounting no growth in hydrocarbon
production ever again in the U.S. and we made the
case that buying core assets like ETE, PAGP and
WMB would provide investors with outstanding
returns going forward.” That strategy clearly worked
well in 2016 as ETE, PAGP and WMB were up an
impressive 250%, 135% and 130% from their babies
thrown out with the bath water phase in February
(awfully good compared to the AMLP Index ETF up
60% and the S&P 500 up 23% for the same period).
One reason we were so enthusiastic about these
particular pipeline MLPs was the result of the
crossover benefit we gain from being invested in the
private markets as we had insight into the large
production volume increases that were occurring in
our private portfolio of energy assets in the Permian
Basin. We wrote last time about how in spite of the
big moves in the MLPs, they were still well below their
peaks from 2015, so there could be further upside,
saying, “AMLP is still down (22%) from the peak of
eighteen months ago. Going forward, we see a
confluence of events that could further stimulate MLP
gains, including: 1) a less environmentally sensitive
Trump Administration likely to accelerate drilling and
pipeline projects (would be huge win for ETE) 2)
technological advances continue to defy pundits who
conclude depletion of existing wells must reduce
volumes, and 3) a rapid recovery in rig counts in the
Permian as $50 oil makes E&P companies extremely
profitable in the basin (much to OPEC’s chagrin).”
Curiously, the last few months have not gone
according to that plan as despite a number of positives
on the policy side, energy prices (oil and natural gas)
have been stuck in a rut and MLP returns have been
mixed as AMLP and PAGP gave up a little ground,
down (3%) and (8%), while ETE and WMB have
continued to rise, up 4% and 6%. There may be some
uncertainty on oil prices given the tug of war between
OPEC and the U.S. shale producers, but one thing
that is not uncertain is that more rigs are activate,
more wells are being drilled and more hydrocarbons
need to be transported, so we expect continued upside
from the MLPs.
Turning to commodities we have made the point over
the years that the cyclicality in the commodity space
has to do with the reflexive nature of the production
and use of commodities. When prices are high
companies want to produce a lot, but user demand
falls and when prices are low companies want to
produce less, but user demand rises. We summarized
that primary point last year in our MCCM Surprises
#9, The Cure for Low Prices in Low Prices, saying, “it
turns out that capitalism works and high prices bring
on new capacity that eventually collapses prices and
then low prices lead to shuttering of capacity they
eventually allows prices to move back up.” That is
exactly what happened in 2015 and into 2016; capacity
was shut-in (and user demand grew at lower prices)
which set the stage for a strong bull market in
commodities last year. After a very strong recovery
from the February lows, the S&P GSCI struggled in
Q3 and the first half of Q4, which prompted us to
write about some wisdom from one of our favorite
market commentators, saying “as Kiril Sokoloff has
written many times, primary trend moves will have a
series of “tests” early on which will throw off many
investors resulting in the largest (and best money
making) portion of the recovery being captured by the
smallest number of participants (there is a reason that
the average investor underperforms the markets over
the long term).” When looking at the GSCI from a
technical perspective last quarter we observed that the
primary recovery trend was intact and that the index
continued to make higher lows (five at that point),
was locked in a series of three higher highs and looked
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First Quarter 2017
poised to take out the June 2016 peak. What a
difference a quarter makes. In Q1, Kiril looked
prophetic as commodities were smacked down hard,
falling (8%) through 3/27, before being rescued
(temporarily) by an oversold rally to finish the quarter
only down (4.5%). That respite, didn't last long as the
volatility in GSCI continued in April leaving the index
only fractionally above the 3/27 low, down (8%)
CYTD. The Sokoloff Test is now testing the resolve of
commodity investors big time, as all of the
momentum indicators have shifted to negative with
GSCI having now made three lower highs (bad sign),
crossed below the 50dma and the 200dma (bad sign)
and also now on the verge of breaking the series of
higher lows (last straw?). Once again refreshing the
numbers on the GSCI since the beginning of the
commodity bear market in August 2011, GSCI is
down (60%) and down the same (55%) from the peak
in oil prices in June 2014, so there is plenty of
headroom for this index to recover if we have indeed
changed the primary trend to positive. Since the fall
of 2011, the S&P 500 and the GSCI make a giant
alligator jaws pattern with SPX up 145% and GSCI
down (60%). One thing history has taught us is that
eventually all alligator jaws will close, the tough part is
getting the timing right. We will write a lot more
about commodities in the coming quarters and we
will see if the Sokoloff Test shakes out the weak hands
in the near term with one last cathartic down turn or
whether the first half of 2016 was just a short-covering
rally resulting in a false breakout and the primary
trend is still lower as deflation creeps back into the
system.
Looking back at the end of 2016, oil prices broke out
in Q4, charging hard in December to close the year at
$53.72, up a solid 11.4% for the quarter. A curious
thing about that move was that it was counter to the
normal seasonal pattern of oil that we described in the
Q3 letter, saying, “we do know that November, and
the first half of December, are seasonally weak periods
for oil (with an average decline of 7%) followed by a
little rally into year-end and another seasonally weak
period in January and February so it could be a wild
ride over the Holidays.” We discussed in January that
the Chinese Year of the Monkey (known for surprises)
foiled that conventional wisdom and oil was strong
from the post-election trough on 11/12 through the
end of the year (rising 21% during that period). We
commented that “The most intriguing thing about the
late November and December rally is that it occurred
while the dollar was surging 3% (normally a
contrarian indicator for oil) as the narrative shifted
toward how strong the U.S. economy would be in
2017 as the trifecta of lower taxes, reduced regulation
and huge fiscal spending will all boost growth (and
therefore demand for oil).” We said we would take
the under on all three elements of the Trump trifecta
(so far, so good after the first 100 days) and that, “the
pesky fact that oil supplies have been stubbornly high
(contrary to the promises from OPEC to cut
production) would put pressure on oil prices. We had
incorporated that view into our MCCM Surprises #4,
When OPEC Freezes Over… saying, “After the
ceremonial show of OPEC unity in November, where
members agreed to production cuts to attempt to firm
up oil prices, it turns out that members of Cartels
actually cheat and excess supply continues to dog the
oil market. In hindsight it becomes clear that the
agreed upon “cuts” were merely normal seasonal
production declines and 2017 brings a chorus of “you
cut first, no you cut first…” Global crude inventories
remain stubbornly high and prices fall back toward
the bottom of the New Normal, $40 to $60 range,
before bouncing back to end the year at $60.” Oil was
stable during the first two months of 2017 and then
showed some major volatility in the next two months
of the year (again defying normal seasonality). WTI
prices were essentially flat during January and
February, before tanking (12%) in the first three weeks
of March to finish Q1 down (9%). The rally from the
trough on 3/24 lasted until 4/11 and recaptured
almost all of the losses until some bad inventory data
came out and prices fell to finish down (11%), CYTD
through April. $49 is still a ways from $40 and the
dollar weakness could help buffer oil prices in the near
term, but the ramp-up in U.S. shale production
appears to be gaining momentum so the big inventory
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First Quarter 2017
draws that the oil bulls are relying on for higher prices
seem more like hope than reality at this point. We
want to reiterate here that, “we have been spending an
disproportionate amount of time with our private
energy managers this year (that is an indication of
how attractive we think the opportunities are) and
every time we talk to one of the teams in the oil patch
we come away even more excited about the potential
to make outsized returns in the private oil & gas
markets.”
Oil and gold get all the media glory, but there are
many other commodities that are not only headline
worthy, but have proven to be sources of outstanding
returns for investors as well. We discussed last time
how natural gas, copper and iron ore were examples
of commodities we should pay attention to and seek
to profit from over time. We wrote last time about
how the industrial metals are correlated with global
and specifically Chinese GDP growth. Given the
strong economic numbers coming out of China
recently (GDP growth (6.9%), manufacturing and non
-manufacturing PMI, retail sales and M2 growth), it
appears the predictive power of the industrial metals
has been proven once again. Natural Gas was an
example of an investor’s dream last year and we wrote
last time that the recovery from the March trough of
$1.64 to close the year near $4 resulted in a 59.2% gain
for the entire year (remember, the (12%) Q1
drawdown was tough). The best part about the
recovery was that it didn't have the normal volatility
associated with that kind of climb (that shakes
investors out at every little downturn). In getting
ready for the winter, we said in the Q3 letter that,
“there are some very interesting developments with
the transition from El Nino to La Nina that could
make this winter particularly interesting in the natural
gas world.” We meant interesting in the sense that
predictions of colder than average weather would lead
to better prices for natural gas, not that warmer than
average weather would lead to outrageous volatility.
We wrote last time that, “With an unusually warm
winter so far it appears that we got the baby sister
version of La Nina and natural gas prices have
weakened dramatically in January, falling a brutal
(21%) from the $3.93 late December peak to $3.11 at
1/31. If the temperature remain unseasonably mild,
natural gas prices could stay under pressure and the
level to watch now is the $2.62 low on 11/11 as if that
level is breached the bullish trend reverts to a bearish
trend and that could be bad news for natural gas
prices, meaning $2.00 could happen in a hurry given
the continued high production levels in the Marcellus
and Utica basins.” The weather did stay unseasonably
warm and natural gas prices continued lower in
February, but the $2.62 low held, not once, but twice,
on 2/21 and 2/27 when prices hit a 2017 low of $2.69
and then bounced right back up for the rest of the
quarter (and continued into April). So for Q1, natural
gas was the only thing chilly during winter 2017 as it
fell (17%), but with continued recovery it is now only
down (11.6%) year-to-date through the end of April.
We wrote in January that, “Something to keep an eye
on is many of the natural gas equities that had been
star performers in 2016 (SWN, RRC, COG, RICE,
where prices were up between 40% and 160% through
September) have turned down hard (telling us
something?), and are down between (15%) and (30%)
over the past four months.” As it happens, they were
telling us something and natural gas did indeed
correct, but an interesting thing happened over the
past three months in these names. There was a
bifurcation between the lower quality (SWN, RRC)
and higher quality (COG, RICE) companies (quality
based on acreage and leverage). SWN and RRC
continued to fall, down another (16%) and (18%),
while COG and RICE rallied 8%. We have a couple of
managers who are beginning to get bullish again on
natural gas so it will be interesting to see how things
develop if/when La Niña actually causes some extreme
weather.
We have described copper as the proverbial ball
rolling down a flight of stairs over the years during the
great commodity bull market as there were a lot of
bounces along the way down, but the destination was
a bad place. Most commodity markets turned in
February of 2016, but Dr. Copper wasn't released from
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First Quarter 2017
the ICU until October. The long-time patient came
out of the hospital feeling very frisky and went on a
run from $2.10 to a peak of $2.80 in mid-February of
this year (a surge of 33%). We wrote about the
ferocity of the rally and its 13% move during
November and December to end the year last time.
We also mentioned the telltale sign that this type of
move is imminent is a contraction of the range of
movement over a period of time, like molecules
vibrating faster as they are about to change form. We
wrote about this in great detail in our letter on George
Soros and reflexivity and summarized last time saying,
“Soros has said this phase shift phenomenon and how
it was one of the tools he used to find inflection
points, times when it made sense to break from the
herd and take a contrarian position (in fact, he said
you should never fight the primary trend until this
phase shift occurs).” On the surface, Dr. Copper kept
the party going in Q1, rising 5.5% during the period,
but that number masks some serious volatility during
the quarter as the reflation versus deflation debate
reappeared as some of the promises made by the
Trump Administration didn't actually occur during its
first 100 days and doubt began to creep into the
collective minds of investors who had piled into
commodity and infrastructure stories in Q4 and the
beginning of Q1. Copper rallied 12% from $2.50 on
12/31 to a peak of $2.80 on Valentines’ Day, then
turned down just as sharply and fell (7.8%) over the
next three week to finish at $2.58 on 3/10 and
recovered 2% of that back to end the quarter at $2.63.
After a quick rally over a couple days back to $2.70 to
start April, the bottom dropped out and Dr. Copper
started looking a little green again, falling (6.3%) to
$2.53. But when China reported Q1 GDP growth
above expectations (6.9%), everyone was feeling great
again in the commodity ward and copper surged 2.8%
over the final week to close at $2.60. Despite all the
volatility, it appears that the copper markets are
simply consolidating the huge gains from the end of
last year. So long as the patient doesn't regress below
the $2.53 level, the primary trend is still upwards and
there are a number of positive developments in terms
of capacity coming off-line and demand ticking up
that should help keep Dr. Copper from having a
relapse. All that said, we will be watching this market
closely as it appears to have reverted back to its former
useful self as a primary indicator of global GDP
growth and the unwinding of the Chinese
rehypothecation programs that were biasing the
copper data appear to have been completed.
The copper related stocks didn't have as much fun in
Q1 as they did in Q4, but they were quite strong for
the most part as SCCO (Southern Copper) surged
11%, FM.TO (First Quantum) was up 5%, GLEN.L
(Glencore) jumped 10% and UK:AAL (Anglo
American) was up 5% and only FCX (FreeportMcMoRan) slipped a bit, falling (3%). Given that the
returns from Q4 to the end of January were a
stunningly good collection of numbers at 46%, 51%,
53%, 40% and 53% respectively, we will cut them
some slack for “only” delivering single digits on
average in Q1. These stocks have been so strong since
the commodity cycle turned last February, we wrote
last time that, “Perhaps there is a reason that we chose
copper for the official MCCM color as the Fab Five
put up some staggering numbers over the past year
(since the trough last January), soaring 75%, 475%,
315%, 475% and 320% respectively.” With those types
of gaudy numbers there was bound to be some sort of
consolidation and we may be in the midst of that right
now. Over the past three months through the end of
April, the Copperline Corp has taken a breather with
SCCO down (8%), FM.TO down (21%), GLEN.L
down (7%), UK:AAL down (18%) and FCX down
(24%). Kiril warned us that primary trends will be
tested to try and shake out the weak hands, so until
the facts change on supply or demand trends, we will
aspire to remain strong hands and buy what is offered
at a discount. That said, it is possible that economic
growth is rolling over as the Citi Economic Surprises
Index (CESI) has fallen off a cliff lately. We will be
watching Dr. Copper closely in the quarters to come
to see if the reflation trade can resume or whether it
was simply a 2016 China stimulus induced hope trade.
The surge in iron ore last year makes the copper jump
appear to have feet of clay as the triple play of China
Q 1 2 0 1 7 Market Review & Outlook 4 9
First Quarter 2017
shutting in excess capacity for the first time,
increasing fiscal stimulus and pushing the One Belt,
One Road (OBOR) project pushed prices up over
100%. Iron ore kept right on surging into the New
Year and had soared from $79.50 at year end to $94.50
by the third week of February (a quick 18% jump). It
hit a little air pocket over the next couple of weeks,
falling (9.7%) back to $85.30 on 3/9 and then surged
to $92.60 a week later the day after the Fed meeting on
3/15. “Beware the Ides of March” took on a whole
new meaning in the iron ore market this year as
suddenly the bottom fell out and round tripped all the
way back to $79, basically flat for Q1. Iron ore kept
falling in April to a low of $61.50 on 4/18, down a
stunning (35%) in eight weeks, but caught a slight bid
in the final two weeks after China reported strong
GDP numbers to finish the month at $68, now “only”
down (14.5%) year-to-date. After a spectacular Q4,
iron ore related equities were mixed in Q1 with VALE
up 18% (much of that FX and index flow related as
Brazil had a strong quarter), AU:FMG up 5%, BHP
down (1%), RIO up 5% and CLF down (5%), which
we can forgive after rising a stunning 44% in Q4. The
crash in iron ore prices crushed the stocks in April as
the group fell (10%), (15%), (2%), (2%) and (18%)
respectively. The big question now is whether this is a
pause the refreshes, or the beginning of a broader
trend in the rolling over of the reflation trade. We are
sticking with our wingman (Kiril Sokoloff) on this
story for now, as it does appear that there have been
fundamental positive changes in the supply/demand
balance across the commodity complex (less supply,
more demand), but as an increasing amount of hard
data comes in weaker than anticipated there is
certainly a possibility that the deflationary forces
unleashed by demographics and debt (the Killer D’s)
cannot be contained as easily as anticipated over the
past year and the commodity cycle recovery gets cut
short.
Turning to the precious metals, we wrote right before
the election that “one wildcard worth considering is
what would happen to Gold prices in the event of a
surprise upset in the election as many of the elements
of the Trump platform would seemingly be good for
gold.” In fact, the general narrative was that a Trump
victory would cause chaos in markets and, as a result,
huge safe haven demand for gold. That actually did
happen, for about three hours. We wrote last quarter
that, “It was amazing how quickly the narrative
changed and how quickly gold began to drop,
plunging (11.3%) from Election Day to the trough on
12/22. Something changed again in the precious
metals markets in late December and gold has rallied
7% and silver has rallied 11% over the past five weeks
(we will write more about that next quarter).” So here
we are in the next quarter and things definitely
changed. Like most markets we have discussed thus
far (with a few notable exceptions) Q1 was the antiQ4 and in the precious metals markets the differences
couldn't be more dramatic. In Q4, gold was down
(12.8%), silver was down (16.9%), platinum was down
(12.1%) and even palladium fell (5.5%). Conversely,
in Q1, gold gained 7.5%, silver surged 12%, Platinum
picked up just 1%, and Palladium piled on 12%. Some
turmoil in the global economy, like missile strikes in
Syria and tensions in North Korea stoked significant
volatility in April as the metals moved in
unpredictable ways to bring CYTD returns to 9.5% for
gold, 6% for silver, 16% for palladium and still just 1%
for platinum. With continued weakness in the dollar,
we continue to see a positive environment for
precious metals and should markets get a little more
volatile in the summer or fall, safe haven demand
could pick up and drive more capital in search of
stores of value. One wild card in the precious metals
story is the emergence of the crypto currencies
(Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, etc.), which are gaining in
popularity as alternative currencies (long the sole role
of precious metals) so it will be interesting to watch
developments in this area and we may have to start
tracking the performance of the cryptos in future
letters. Just for fun, Bitcoin started the year at $968
and while there has been a lot of volatility ($775 on
1/11, $1,291 on 3/3 and $934 on 3/24), the current
price is $1,414, a gain of 46% over four months (not
too shabby).
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First Quarter 2017
In precious metals investing, the options are to invest
directly in the actual metals or to invest in the
companies that unearth, process and distribute the
metals. There has also been an interesting cyclicality
to the relationship between the two segments as when
the miners outperform the metals it has usually been a
bullish sign, and vice versa. We wrote last time that,
“the six weeks following the Trump victory were
challenging for investors to hold conviction on the
precious metals. But a funny thing happened on
12/22 and both the metals and the miners are surging
again and staying constructive has been rewarded,
with GLD up 7%, SLV up 11%, GDX up 25%, GDXJ
up 34%, SIL up 24% and SILJ up 33%, through the end
of January.” We went on to repeat something that we
have written on a few occasions over the years that
when looking at the precious metals markets,
“historically when gold miners and silver are
outperforming the gold metal that has been
confirmation of a bullish trend. Based on that criteria
clearly the bull is loose in the precious metals shop.”
What we should have written was that those returns
were “gaudy” as those types of moves shouldn't
happen in five weeks (but they did), and we should
have reminded ourselves of something we wrote in
Q3, “Note to self for future letters, when you use
words like gaudy to describe returns it is time to think
about the other side of the trade. We have always
liked the old saw, “if a trend is unsustainable it will
not be sustained.” Those types of moves are clearly
not sustainable and it should come as no surprise that
the metals and the miners took it on the chin in the
past three months. GLD was able to eke out a 4%
positive return, but SLV surrendered (2%), GDX gave
up (7%), GDXJ ground down (15%), SIL sank (9%)
and SILJ sloughed off (17%). Again, we should have
taken our own advice from the amended rule when we
wrote, “we will update the rule even further this time
saying that if one uses a word like gaudy to describe
returns the right answer is not just to sell, but go
short.” Now even with the challenging period since
the last letter, given how strong January was, the
CYTD returns are not that bad at 9%, 6%, 2%, (4%),
3% and (4%) respectively, but the incredible volatility
is quite disquieting. Something doesn't feel right in
this sector as the miners are incredibly cheap, capacity
has been rationalized, costs have fallen (as oil prices
have stabilized at much lower levels than 2014) and
global demand for precious metals continues to rise
(individuals and central banks), but as we have
written in this section before it just doesn't appear that
the miners can find their “natural buyer” and they
have been relegated to the momentum trading crowd,
which is not great for us long-term investors.
Shifting to hedge funds, we opened this section last
time with some thoughts on how the business had
changed in a ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) world
and why we believe that the forward returns over the
next decade are likely to be much more favorable for
hedged strategies (expect T-Bills + 5%) than long-only
equity strategies (expect T-Bills + 3%) and fixed
income (expect T-Bills + 2%). We wrote, “According
to the media headlines, hedge funds as a group
(although we rail all the time against calling them a
group since the term is as meaningless as mutual
fund) finished their seventh consecutive year of
underperformance relative to equities in 2016.
Everything in investing is cyclical and we have seen
these lean periods in the past (like 1994 to 2000) and
they have always been followed by prosperous periods
and we would expect the next seven years to look
more like 2000-2007 when traditional equities
struggled and hedged equities excelled.” So as we
begin what we believe is year one of that cycle, let’s see
how the various hedge fund strategies fared in Q1.
The HFRI Equity Hedge Index was up a very healthy
3.8% during the quarter, as the gale force headwind
that had been buffeting long/short managers (on the
short side in particular) began to abate, correlations
within equities fell to levels not seen in over a decade
(a positive for active management) and there were
clear signs of dispersion between the winners and
losers in various industry groups (like retail and
technology). My, what a difference a quarter makes as
the horrific Q1 of 2016 rolled off the trailing one-year
performance the twelve month number went from
0.1% in 2016 to 11.5% for the TTM. Q1 of last year
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First Quarter 2017
was the worst quarter since Q1 2000 as it was one of
only a handful of periods in market history where the
best companies performed the worst and the worst
companies performed the best. To put come numbers
around the craziness that was early 2016, the top 50
holdings of the leading hedge funds (one could safely
assume these are high quality companies with long
track records of success based on historical results)
were down (10%) relative to the S&P 500 being flat
(safe to say an anomaly). But as bad as that was, the
short side was even worse. Remarkably, the bottom
quintile of stocks in terms of profitability (those you
could safely assume should underperform the markets
over the long term), were up a stunning 28%. Perhaps
needless to say, being short those companies was very
painful.
2016 was a trying year in the hedge fund space and we
asked ourselves (and wrote in the Q1 letter), “Have
managers lost their Edge?” We followed that up in Q3
saying, “We spend a lot of time thinking about,
identifying, analyzing and monitoring manager edge
and we would NOT conclude that the fundamental
approach utilized by active long/short managers is no
longer effective.” And finally, we wrote in Q2, “There
have been plenty of incidences over the decades where
active management has underperformed passive
management, where traders beat fundamental analysts
and where long only has trumped long/short
strategies. In every one of those instances mean
reversion has occurred and to paraphrase Sir John
Templeton again, it won’t be different this time.” We
discussed last time how, similar to Roger Babson’s
now famous warning about the perils of the stock
markets in 1929, just because we were early (some
would say wrong) in predicting when the mean
reversion in performance of long/short strategies
would begin, that does not impact whether we would
be correct or not when making a similar forecast
today because they are independent events based on
new and different information. We based our view on
the fact that, “as the effectiveness of QE programs
globally has waned, we see increasing opportunities
for managers to generate returns on both the long and
the short side and we would expect the Alpha of these
strategies to compound at a much higher rate in the
coming quarters.” Clearly we were early/wrong by
one quarter (Q4 was challenging for hedged strategies
after the surprise Trump victory), but the
environment has shifted dramatically in the past few
months as the euphoria about the Trump trifecta has
faded and the reality that governing is harder than
campaigning sets in for the Republicans. Last quarter
we said, “perhaps 2017 will turn out like 2001 after all
and then we will be writing from a different
perspective (long/short > long-only) in the coming
quarters and years.” One swallow does not make a
spring and one quarter does not make a trend, but
there are signs that point to sunnier skies ahead for
hedged equity. Coach K has taught us that the great
players (investors) always focus on the next play, not
the last play, and the best long/short managers who
have stuck to their discipline of buying great
companies and shorting bad companies have
generated solid (but clearly not spectacular, yet…)
results over the past year. We wrote in Q3 that, “we
believe that alpha generation across long/short equity
managers has troughed at levels we have witnessed
only a few other times in history (most recently in
2000 and 2008)”, but we were a quarter early. Alpha
was back in Q1, and it was strongest in the long/short
equity space. Here’s to the Next Play.
Activist strategies have taken a lot of bruising in the
media in recent years as a number of high profile
managers have had some big mistakes (like VRX) and
the image of the corporate raider has been
reinvigorated as more boardroom battles have taken
place in high profile companies. Activist managers,
however, have put their collective heads down and put
up some respectable numbers over the past year as the
HFRX Activist Index had its fourth consecutive solid
quarter, rising 1% to bring the trailing twelve-month
return to a very nice 13.3%. The broader HFRI Event
Driven Index also continued its winning ways during
Q1, rising another 2.2% (after 3.7% in Q4) to bring the
trailing one-year return to a very solid 13.8% (rapidly
closing the gap with long-only equities). A critical
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First Quarter 2017
point that we have made over the past year is that a
very supportive credit environment has been a
tailwind for these strategies and we wrote in Q3 that
refer to him as Maverick.
“Event Driven strategies also benefitted from the
continued tightening of credit spreads and the ability
of many highly leveraged companies to get debt relief
as the banks continue to “extend and pretend.” We
actually subsided somewhat (for now), but we believe
they will accelerate again in 2017, as economic growth
continues to disappoint.” While our concerns about
discussed in the credit section above that the HY
market has been completely “en fuego” over the past
year and using the Space Balls analogy, yields were
moving from Ludicrous to Maximum Plaid, so event
driven managers did have a brisk tailwind behind
them to help returns. We don't believe that this trend
of tightening spreads can continue forever (or even
much longer) so we will be a tad more discerning
when looking at opportunities in this segment as the
future environment is likely to be a bit less hospitable.
On the plus side, we wrote last time about an upstart
manager we follow who has put himself in exactly the
right place at precisely the right time with a strategy
focused on buying only highly leveraged companies
where he believes cash flows can support debt
reduction (essentially replicating an LBO strategy in
the public markets). We noted last time that, “His
portfolio was up a stunning 40% for the year,
benefitting from the surge in small-caps and the
decline in credit spreads.” We continue to be nervous
about where we are in the credit cycle and the
potential for rising defaults. Despite his youth and
relative inexperience, the manager made a compelling
case for why the oil supply shock has modified the
default cycle (extended it like in the mid-1980s) and
he has boldly (some might say arrogantly) predicted
their portfolio could enjoy similar gains in 2017
should defaults ease from current levels. We wrote
last time that, “Like the scene from Top Gun when
Viper asks if Maverick thinks his name will be on the
Top Gun trophy and he replies ‘Yessir,’ Viper says,
‘that’s pretty arrogant considering the company you’re
in’, Maverick replies, ‘Yessir,’ and Viper says, ‘I like
that in a pilot.’ Confidence = #Edge.” They say that
it’s not arrogance if you can back it up and the
manager put up another 10% quarter in Q1 (brings
TTM return to a stunning 53%), so we will now only
We wrote last time that, “Bankruptcies and defaults
the weakness of the economy seem well placed given
the very weak Q1 growth number of 0.7%, our
concerns about the potential for rising defaults in the
credit markets seem completely off base. After a brief
rise in mid-2016, defaults have fallen back and there
have been a much lower level of bankruptcies in 2017
versus 2016. Hedge fund managers playing in the
distressed credit sandbox have had a field day over the
past year and while the HFRI Distressed Index was up
a rather pedestrian 1.7% in Q1, for the trailing year,
the Distressed Index surged an astounding 19%
(edging out a 17.2% gain for the S&P 500). We say
astounding because usually you only get these types of
returns in distressed debt coming off bottoms after
recessions when you can buy good assets at cheap
prices as the bad balance sheets get unwound. There
actually wasn't any real distress last year (other than in
the energy space) and prices haven’t gone from cheap
to fair value, but rather from overvalued to extremely
overvalued. Our fear is that some distressed managers
frustrated by the lack of distressed merchandise have
ventured into “other credit” (a new line item on some
manager reports) and may be buying assets with no
margin of safety (in direct violation of the spirit of
value investing). In fact, we can’t resist repeating
what we said a couple times last year during the nonstop rise in HY credit, “We can’t help but be reminded
that this ferocious rally feels like the last gasp rally in
2001 within the Telecom sector before companies like
WorldCom and Qwest defaulted (and then
disappeared, taking huge piles of investors’ money
with them). There were some tremendous
opportunities to make big returns buying the good
assets from the bad balance sheets in 2002 and we
would expect those opportunities to come again, but
not until 2017 or 2018.” While it is always good to
make returns when you can get them, there is real
danger that buying assets at prices well above fair
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value will lead to less robust returns in the future.
Without question Central Bank liquidity and ZIRP
have provided a lifeline to many companies that
should have disappeared over the past few years and
there is a lot of “soon to be bad” debt on corporate
balance sheets that will eventually find its way into
distressed managers’ portfolios. We said last time
that, “Gravity always wins and there will come a day
in the not so distant future where the opportunity set
for distressed debt will get even better and the returns
could be quite substantial.” We look forward to that
day and we would expect to allocate significant capital
to this space then, just like we did in 2009.
Absolute return oriented strategies have struggled in
the Age of Central Bankers as the ZIRP has made it
challenging for market neutral players who rely on
cash returns for a meaningful percentage of their
returns. The extreme choppiness of the market has
made life extremely difficult for trend followers. One
of my friends has a great line about this unusual epoch
in our history, “I remember a day when I didn't know
the names of the central bankers and I long for those
days to return.” In Q1, the HFRI Market Neutral
Index was finally able to eke out a positive return,
rising 1.4%, as the ability to extract alpha from both
the long and short side was a welcome respite from
the unidirectional markets in 2016. However, one
decent quarter doesn't make a decent year and the
Index was only up 3.1% over the trailing twelvemonths thanks to a very challenging market
environment in the middle of last year. Until short
rates normalize, market neutral arbitrage will be a
very tough way to make a living unless you apply
significant leverage (perfected by groups like Citadel,
Millennium and Balyasny) to the underlying portfolio.
The HFRI Merger Arbitrage Index had another meh
quarter, rising 1.1%, as the vast amount of liquidity
chasing these deals (and the ubiquity of trading
models provided by the prime brokers to move
product) has squashed premiums and made merger
arbitrage another challenging way to make a living.
For the trailing year, the index was only up 4%, which
compared to bonds (a relevant comparison from a
risk perspective) was a good outcome, but likely below
most investors’ expectations. There are two ways to
attempt to boost returns in merger arbitrage today.
One is to make investments in “anticipated
deals” (deals you think could happen, but have not
been announced, and in some cases you may help
instigate) and the other is to use more leverage than
normal. The best alternative in our view is to adjust
expectations lower (while rates are close to zero) and
be comfortable with merger arbitrage as a fixed
income substitute rather than an equity substitute.
Switching over to the more systematic strategies, the
HFRI Macro/CTA Index was down (0.2%) and the
HFRX Systematic CTA Index was down (1%) in Q1
capping a very disappointing trailing twelve months
where both strategies produced negative returns,
falling (0.8%) and (5.2%) respectively. These poor
returns might seem to run contrary to the headlines
about how the quant funds are taking over the world
and some of the media headlines about how the
legendary funds like Renaissance and Two Sigma put
up very good numbers (rumored to be above 10%, but
they don't report to the indices), but it actually points
to two issues in the systematic business that are likely
to become increasingly problematic in the future.
First is the dispersion between the “Haves” and the
“Have Nots” (this is actually a big problem in all of
asset management) as the “Institutionalization” of the
alternative investment business drives increasing
amounts of capital into the largest firms/funds and
causes wide disparity of opportunity and outcomes.
Second, that concentration of capital coupled with the
rise of high frequency trading is causing increasing
levels of choppiness in the equity markets, which is
causing traditional trend following strategies to
underperform. Another issue we raised last time was
the role of Macro/CTAs as portfolio hedges, saying
“In the past we have made a case that Macro/CTAs
could be an attractive addition to portfolios given
their protective nature during market dislocations
(like 2000, 2008), effectively making them a low-cost
form of insurance against dislocations.” Given our
view that we were headed toward a #2000Redux
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environment and that 2017 and 2018 could resemble
2001 and 2002 in terms of volatility, we thought that
Macro/CTAs could play an effective role in portfolios
as disaster protection. The quantitative argument for
including them in a portfolio was that they could
generate modest returns in normal markets but
provide meaningful returns in big drawdowns (like
they did in 2008).
We wrote last time that,
“Unfortunately that argument has broken down over
the past year as the premiums just went up as the
strategy generated negative returns for 2016. There
are lots of explanations for why the effectiveness of
CTAs is waning ranging from the impact of high
frequency trading to excess liquidity from the central
banks precluding normal price discovery, but
whatever the reason, the cost/benefit equation has
changed and we need to rethink how we utilize these
strategies.” The other potential fly in the ointment is
that in the absence of a “normal” correction, it could
turn out that the environment has changed so much
(capital moves so fast) that traditional trend following
models have been rendered obsolete. Finally, the big
risk that no one wants to acknowledge is something
we have talked about on a number of occasions in the
past. There has been a tidal wave of capital that has
rushed into risk parity strategies (essentially a
leveraged 60/40 portfolio of stocks and long bonds)
and should those strategies have to deleverage during
a correction, the unwinding of this trade
(#RiskDisparity) as we said last time, “‘could
exacerbate the moves on the long end of the curve and
cause the historical relationship between stocks and
bonds to diminish.’ In that type of environment, the
models that created the CTA trading programs would
no longer be valid and there would actually be a
potential scenario where these strategies dramatically
underperform just when you need them to
outperform the most.”
To close the absolute return section, we will repeat a
couple paragraphs from the last letter (without italics
to make it easier to read), that we think help make the
case that despite lackluster recent returns there
continue to be excellent reasons to include A/R and
hedged equity strategies in your portfolio. Most
importantly, we expect A/R strategies to meaningfully
outperform bonds (and perhaps even beat stocks)
over the next market cycle (seven years) and will
dramatically outperform in the event interest rates
begin to rise toward a more normal level (i.e., where
Fed Funds equals the Nominal GDP growth rate). If
rates were to rise, bonds would suffer significant
negative returns from capital losses (as we have said
before, the reason buying bonds for capital gains is a
fool’s errand) while absolute return strategies should
provide acceptable returns from the combination of
the alpha of the strategy and the better return
provided by higher rates on the core cash.
Importantly, A/R has a positive correlation to interest
rates while traditional fixed income has a negative
correlation and after a thirty-five year bull market in
bonds, it is a logical construct to hedge some portion
of that portfolio with A/R strategies. Going further,
given the recent volatility in the bond markets, it is
critical to reiterate an important point that we have
written about on numerous occasions over the past
couple of years. Historically, the primary purpose of
fixed income in a diversified portfolio has been to
counterbalance the volatility of equities which are
necessary as the core of the portfolio in order to
generate returns in excess of inflation. Given current
conditions, traditional bonds are unlikely to deliver
returns adequate to warrant their inclusion in
portfolios (despite their risk reduction benefits)
because the opportunity cost is too high. Now, more
than ever, we believe that substituting a diversified
portfolio of hedge fund strategies for traditional fixed
income exposure will prove to be beneficial to
portfolios over the coming years. The primary benefit
of substituting alternative investments for traditional
bond exposure is lower overall portfolio volatility with
higher expected returns (particularly at current
valuations). When valuations are above average and
there is a high level of uncertainty, volatility is usually
close behind. Going forward the environment is such
that alpha will likely outperform beta (by a significant
margin in our view). Unfortunately, we expect that
environment to persist for many years. Alpha is a
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First Quarter 2017
precious and scarce commodity and it turns out that it
is not found in quiet, safe and stable environments,
but rather in chaotic and unstable environments
where it takes courage, in Ben Graham’s words, “to be
greedy when others are fearful.”
Given the
challenging performance of these types of strategies in
the recent past, we appreciate how difficult it is to
consider rotating away from the short-term best
performing strategies (passive) toward strategies that
have performed the less well (active).
On the hedged equity side, we spoke in the final
section of the last letter on how the reports of the
demise of active management (and hedge funds) had
been greatly exaggerated and talked about the
importance of having courage in your convictions to
stay the course with a diversified, active strategy.
There are a few principles we believe in
wholeheartedly. We have great conviction that
hedged equity is the best way to gain exposure to the
equity markets over the long term. We have great
conviction that putting capital in the hands of the
most talented portfolio managers is a winning
strategy.
We have great conviction that the
investment environment is nearing an important
inflection point and that we are inching ever close to
another Babson Break when having a core exposure to
hedged equity will be critical to preserving capital.
We met with an interesting manager recently (a Tiger
Grand-Cub spun out of one of the original firms that
spun out of Tiger) with a focus on healthcare who had
a challenging year in 2016. The manager said in his
year-end letter that when things don't go as expected
(like hedge funds in 2016 or Tom Brady in the first
half of Super Bowl LI) there are four possible
explanations; 1) We don't know what we are doing
and we never did, 2) We know what we are doing and
we stopped following the play book or lost discipline,
3) We knew what we were doing, but have lost the
edge or 4) Perhaps there was an aberration in the
markets (e.g. political challenges in healthcare). We
think this is a great summary of what investors must
attempt to discern when outcomes don't meet
expectations. We have great conviction that we, and
our managers, indeed know what we are doing. We
have great conviction that while there were some
small lapses in discipline (allowing net exposure to
drift too low) we have stuck to the core of the original
(and long term successful) play book. We have great
conviction that the team has not lost the edge and in
fact is stronger than ever (we learn from our
mistakes). Therefore, by process of elimination we are
left to conclude that 2016 was an aberration in the
equity markets, a year punctuated by an anomalous
series of events where shorts went up more than longs
and low quality companies outperformed high quality
companies. Looking at the scoreboard, with 8
minutes left, trailing 28-3, one might be compelled to
pull the QB and change the game plan. Nothing could
be further from our minds and we are confident that
our team will rally like the Patriots behind Brady and
bring home the championship in 2017 (so far, so good
on that score after the first four months).
When thinking more about our opening question
about whether 2017 will be more like our original
thesis of #2000Redux (and be like 2001) or whether
that thesis has been “fired” by Mr. Trump and we are
now on the path of #WelcomeToHooverville (more
like 1929) we find it very surprising that after the big
shocks in Brexit, the U.S. election and the Italian
referendum, which were all supposed to be market
killers, the equity markets kept rolling along. We
wrote last time that, “throughout 2016 the pundits all
said that if any one of these three events were to
happen, there would be trouble in the capital markets.
Heaven forbid that all three should happen because
then there would be total chaos. The reality turned
out quite differently than the pundits’ worst fears.”
The biggest fears came from a growing concern about
the rise and spread of populism. All eyes were focused
on the 2017 European election calendar that was
chock full of far-right candidates foaming at the
mouth to ride on Trump’s coattails into office and
shake up the establishment. In 2016, the, “markets
shook off every piece of ‘bad’ news and surged higher
on hopes that political movement away from the elites
who had been in control for the past decades would
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First Quarter 2017
yield more pro-growth policies (the one wrinkle is
that history has shown that ‘better together’ actually
works and that globalization has created enormous
economic prosperity).” In 2017, the most populist
candidates have been defeated and, naturally, markets
are embracing those events with gusto (highly
illogical, but it seems we are more tilted toward
emotion than logic today in capital markets) and
rallying on the status quo narrative (heads we win,
tails we win). We can lean into the idea that not
breaking up the EU (Ms. Le Pen’s stance if she won in
France) is a superior position for global equities so
perhaps the risks we discussed last time will not loom
as large in the near term. We discussed how “the risks
in the global capital markets as movements toward
populism,
nationalism,
isolationism
and
protectionism have historically led to less robust
growth, destruction of wealth and lower standards of
living for all. Over the course of history, these ideas
have unfortunately led to conflict and what begins as
trade disputes devolves into trade wars and ultimately
into armed conflict.” Unfortunately, there has been
more than a little sabre rattling (and a few missiles
launched) in recent weeks, so we may not be
completely out of harm’s way yet on this front
(hopefully we don't have to write about real war fronts
in future letters). We closed this section last time
talking about how close we may be to an inflection
point, saying “in the investment markets, we are at a
very delicate point today (perhaps even at a tipping
point) and with very high valuations of assets in many
markets around the world it would not take much of a
catalyst to create a very unpleasant situation for global
investors. In fact, there is a series of events that could
unfold that would create a first class ticket to
Hooverville, or what might then affectionately become
known as Trumptown.” We are certainly hopeful that
this is a journey we won’t have to write about in the
future, but we remain cautious and defensive to be
prepared for what could be a challenging road ahead.
Howard Marks says, “You can’t predict. You can
prepare.” One of our favorite Chinese proverbs is
“precaution averts perils.” With those nuggets of
wisdom as an appetizer, we leave you with the main
course, the indelible words of the hero from the last
letter, Roger Babson, from his speech to attendees of
the Babson National Business Conference in
September of 1929 where he said:
“I repeat what I said at this time last year and the
year before, that sooner or later a crash is coming
which will take down the leading stocks and cause
a decline of 60 to 80 points in the Dow Jones
Barometer (it was 381 at the time). Fair weather
cannot always continue. The Economic Cycle is in
progress today as it was in the past. The Federal
Reserve System has put the banks in a strong
position, but it has not changed human nature.
More people are borrowing and speculating today
than ever in our history. Sooner or later a crash is
coming and it may be terrific. Wise are those
investors who now get out of debt and reef their
sails. This does not mean selling all you have, but
it does mean paying up your loans and avoiding
margin speculation. Sooner or later the stock
market boom will collapse like the Florida boom.
Someday the time is coming when the market will
begin to slide off, sellers will exceed buyers, and
paper profits will begin to disappear. Then there
will immediately be a stampede to save what
paper profits then exist.”
The first quarter of 2017 was a good one and the path
of markets has traced since the November election is
remarkably similar to late 1928 and early 1929. There
are myriad similarities in the political, economic and
market environment from policies aimed at
protectionism and tariffs to slowing economic growth.
Parallels from overleveraged companies and
consumers to extreme levels of optimism and a belief
in new paradigms and commentary that echoes the
equally famous (albeit for all the wrong reasons)
words of Irving Fisher that, “stocks have reached a
new, permanently higher plateau.” Roger Babson
spent the later stages of his life trying to beat the
power of gravity and one thing we know for sure is
that Gravity Rules.
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First Quarter 2017
Market Outlook
US
So let’s begin our Around the World tour in the good
old U.S. of A and take a peek at how both the
economy and the markets are shaping up for the
balance of 2017. We know from history that
economic growth and equity market returns are not
absolutely correlated and they can deviate from one
another quite dramatically over both the long and
short term. For example, from 1966 to 1983 the
economy grew 75% in real terms and the equity
markets were dead flat, while from 1983 to 2000 the
economy grew 75% in real terms and the equity
markets were up nearly eleven fold. That said, there is
one time when there is a high correlation between
economic activity and equity market returns, actually
a quite negative correlation, and that occurs around
the beginning of Recessions. When a Recession
occurs in the U.S., the equity markets drop (30%) on
average (closer to down (40%) if we exclude the two
War-aided periods where markets actually rose). The
range of drops is quite wide with the best (least bad)
being down (15%) in the 1960 to 1961 period and the
worst being down (84%) in the 1929 to 1933 period.
There are many reasons (which we will highlight) why
we should be considering the probability of a
Recession and how we should think about positioning
portfolios in advance of that event. We highlighted
last quarter that it is important to “remember [that]
we don't need another GFC to have a bad outcome in
the markets as the very shallow Recession in 2001
(which is what we expect in 2017) triggered the
‘normal’ market correction of (38%) and given that
the median stock today is actually more overvalued
than back then (overvaluations in 2000 were
extremely narrow) it is not unreasonable to expect
that the correction this time could be of equal (or
larger) magnitude.”
The current economic expansion is the third longest
in history at 95 months, trailing only the 105 month
period during the 1960s boom and the 119 month
period during the Tech Bubble (that ended in 2001),
so it is hard to make the case that the economy is
anywhere but late in the cycle. There is an old market
saw that says “Bull Markets don't die of old age,” but
given that economic expansions actually do and
market corrections occur coincidently with the end of
those expansions, we might beg to differ with that
conventional wisdom. There is also some newer
conventional wisdom (we might argue nonconventional thinking that is not very wise) which we
discussed last time saying “there is a strong consensus
that courtesy of the Fed’s largesse (constant Monetary
stimulus, aka the Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen Put)
that the Business Cycle has been eradicated and that
Recessions are a relic of a less sophisticated time in
financial history.” As anyone who has read these
letters in the past will know, our perspective on these
“It’s Different This Time” views is in concurrence with
Sir John Templeton who said that those are the four
most dangerous words in investing (over the longterm cycles repeat and history rhymes). One other
aspect of economic history applies today having just
come through an election. We touched on this in the
last letter when we wrote, “when a ‘fresh faced’
President (defined as the opposite party following an
eight year term) enters the White House (which has
happened seven times since 1900) the U.S. economy
falls into Recession during the new President’s first
year.
There are plenty of reasons why this
phenomenon is likely to occur; for instance, eight
years is simply pretty close to a normal Business
Cycle, the outgoing President has tried hard (albeit
unsuccessfully) to keep their party in power by
passing legislation that pulls demand forward into
their second term to juice growth and it fades in the
new term, that about 2,000 positions in the
Administration have to be rotated during a Party
change creating a lull in work and the economy stalls,
or the Fed (in an attempt to keep their job) waits too
long to raise rates (tap the brakes) and falls behind the
curve and has to tighten in the new term. All of these
reasons probably play some role, but suffice it to say
that economic activity is cyclical and after a long
expansion, gravity eventually takes over and brings
growth down to earth.” Once again, our primary
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First Quarter 2017
theme surfaces and the laws of nature eventually take
over.
Right after the election there was an interesting
phenomenon that occurred with respect to economic
indicators as the result of the dramatic shift in
sentiment as the narrative changed from “a Trump
victory would be the end of the world as we know it”
to “a Trump victory means everything will be even
more awesome than before.” In fact, to quote the
“Hyperbolist in Chief,” everything (from economic
growth, to job creation, to corporate profitability) will
be Yuge. The promise of the #TrumpTrifecta of
Regulatory Reform, Tax Reform and Fiscal Spending
did actually create a short-term boom in the markets
and we noted in January how “the ‘Trifecta Trade’
that began within hours of Trump’s election win ran
hard for four weeks, taking materials stocks up as
much as 80%, financial stocks up as much as 35%,
energy stocks up 15% and the S&P 500 up about 8%,
but those stocks have gone nowhere since the first
week of December, as market participants try to
decide if the Trifecta Policies really have a chance of
coming true in 2017.” There was one other thing that
boomed in the weeks following the election,
confidence.
The Consumer Confidence indices
exploded higher (both the U. Michigan and the
Conference Board) to levels that we haven’t seen since
the peak of the euphoria during the Tech Bubble in
2000. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Survey had
the largest one-month gain ever, exploding higher to
levels not seen since the ebullience of the recovery
following the invasion of Iraq in 2004. In fact, the
Expectations for Growth sub-Index also had its largest
move in history, surging to a level that implied a surge
in GDP growth would be 7% in 2017. This data series
has been very highly correlated to GDP growth over
time, but it appears that there will now be an anomaly
in the data, as it is mathematically impossible for GDP
growth to achieve those lofty heights (particularly in
light of Q1 coming in at a dismal 0.7%). The dramatic
movements in many of the economic surveys came as
a stark contrast to the hard economic data that
continued to trend negatively, with the biggest
example being the poor Q4 GDP number that capped
off a very poor 1.6% rate for the full year in 2016.
Morgan Stanley research recently created a composite
of economic indicators and broke out the soft
(sentiment) and hard (data) elements, which showed a
stunning reversal in the soft indicators moving from
zero to +2 (on a scale of -2 to +2) while the hard
indicators remained flat.
We discussed last quarter how there were signs that
things were getting worse for the economy and that
rather than a big rebound we could actually see an
acceleration of the downtrend and potentially even a
Recession sometime this year due to the contraction
of liquidity resulting from the shift toward a more
restrictive Monetary Policy stance. We wrote, “QEeen
Janet Yellen has maintained interest rates at crisislevel low levels throughout the current economic
cycle, yet U.S. GDP growth has continued to
disappoint (and confound Fed forecasters). With the
current shift toward a tighter Fed Monetary Policy
stance, growth in commercial bank credit & the
monetary base has slowed to zero (from an average of
7% over past 60 years) which portends a rapid
deceleration in growth in 2017 resulting in a
Recession (right on schedule for our [#2000Redux]
theme).” We contended that taking away the
proverbial punch bowl of free money and zero interest
rates was highly likely to cause a slowdown in
economic activity and that it would take a lot more
than promises from Mr. Trump (like actually working
with Congress to get some legislation passed) to
counter the evolving negative trend in economic
activity. One of the biggest challenges of managing an
economy is the lag effect between having an idea,
drafting legislation, working to pass that legislation
and implementing the programs to make in impact on
economic activity. We warned last quarter that the
“Citi Economic Surprises Index (CESI) has hit a
cyclical inflection point and says economic growth
will slow in 2017 and remember that 2016 GDP
growth was 1.6%, so how much slower can we go
(without hitting stall speed)?” Three short months
later we have our answer, not much.
The CESI
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absolutely collapsed in Q1 and has now given back the
entire gain it experienced in Q4 as the hard data
literally began to fall off a cliff, with the result being
Q1 GDP clocking in at a terrible 0.7% (versus
expectations of over 2%, and estimates as high as 3.5%
in January).
The big issue for the U.S. economy is whether the
growing negative momentum in the hard data can be
arrested (and even better, reversed) by the making
progress on any of the promised reforms in the
#TrumpTrifecta. Perhaps part of the problem in the
near term is that the Administration has run down the
rabbit hole of Healthcare Reform (in a spectacularly
unsuccessful fashion) rather than tackling the
important economic policy agenda that market
participants anticipated. The longer these steroid
shots take to apply to the patient, the more likely the
economy could slip into Recession. We highlighted
last time some of the promises that have diverted
attention from focusing on the Trifecta programs and
here is an update on them; 1) to build a Wall
(Congress said no funding, Mexico, shockingly says
not paying either), 2) to get rid of Obamacare (Tried
to get Bill through House, failed, second draft
pronounced DOA by Senate), 3) to save Medicare,
Medicaid and Social Security (no plan, no action), 4)
to rid the world of Radical Islamic Terrorism (fired 59
cruise missiles at air base in Syria), 5) to ban all
Muslims from entering the country (softened to a
travel ban from six countries), 6) to deport all illegal
immigrants (started trying to deport some), 7) to
Drain the Swamp (actually added more elites and
insiders to Cabinet), 8) to create at least 25 million
jobs (taking credit for jobs created despite no policies
enacted), 9) to revive the steel, auto, coal and basic
manufacturing industries (Reflation Trade coming off
the rails), 10) to pick Supreme Court Justices who are
“great legal scholars” (Got Gorsuch), 11) to stop
spending money on space exploration (Budget draft
actually tried to cut all kinds of programs), 12) to
strengthen the military (no progress) and 13) to get
rid of Dodd-Frank (lots of talk, no action, bring back
Glass-Steagall while you’re at it). As we hit the First
Hundred Days, no Policy decisions to help achieve the
Trifecta, but people still want to believe in the
Narrative, although the markets ceased grinding
higher after the first day of March. There is also
relentless positive spin about how strong many
economic indicators are today, like Consumer
Confidence, Auto Sales and Unemployment rates, and
the Bullish argument is that these things must be signs
that the economy is strong. We wrote last time to
“think about this one for a minute, at which part of an
economic expansion would you expect to have high
levels of confidence, high levels of auto sales (and all
consumption) and low unemployment rates, at the
beginning of the cycle or the end of the cycle? History
provides the answer (as does logic), confidence is low
at the beginning of an economic cycle and high at the
end, car sales trough at the beginning of the cycle and
peak at the end and unemployment is high at the
beginning of the cycle and low at the end.” The more
the talking heads pump up the volume on this type of
data, the stronger the case becomes that we are getting
ever closer to a Recession. To that point, auto sales
have plummeted in the past two months and the rate
of change in payrolls growth has turned negative, both
of which are leading indicators of near term economic
weakness.
The entire tenor of the U.S. equity markets changed
on March 1, as there was one last cathartic burst
upwards in the S&P 500 and the markets have been
dead flat for the past two months. There is a saying
that bonds live in the land of reality and stocks live in
the land of dreams. This dichotomy has become
increasingly apparent over this period. Treasury bond
yields have been locked in a down trend since midDecember last year and have fallen (10%) from that
peak and were giving clear signals that economic
growth was slowing, not accelerating, and that the
reality of the Trifecta happening any time soon was
highly unlikely. Equities had been surging on the
dream that the Trifecta would be completed swiftly,
but then came to an abrupt halt when some of that
reality began to set in when the Healthcare Bill was
defeated. The biggest change in the equity market was
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the rapid collapse of the Reflation Trade that had run
so hard in the weeks following the election and a shift
toward the sector of the market that could tell the best
stories about dreams, Technology. The sectors most
tightly linked to the Reflation Narrative actually had a
bifurcated reaction as the Industrials and Materials
groups simply stopped rising while the Energy and
Financials sectors have been pounded. However, the
calm displayed by the broad sector ETFs, XLI and
XLB, masks some serious deterioration of specific sub
-sectors within the markets like Autos and
Commodities. There is a meaningful rotation of
capital occurring within the broad equity markets as
serious doubts about the ability of the Trump
Administration to get things done grows and there are
suddenly signs of unraveling in some of the
commodity related sectors in China. Some of the
moves were big and fast as the Auto related
companies - GM, F, ALLY (Ally Bank) and SC
(Santander Credit, sub-prime lender) – fell (10%),
(12%), (14%) and (17%), respectively, in the two
months.
Things have been much worse in
Commodity land as Steel was smashed and AKS was
down (34%) and X was down (45%), Copper got
crunched and FCX fell (16%), CA:FM dropped (21%),
SCCO dipped (12%), UK:GLEN fell (14%) and
UK:AAL slumped (22%) and Iron Ore melted down
with VALE off (24%), BHP down (12%), RIO dipped
(10%), AU:FMG dropped (27%) and CLF plunged
(42%) over the nine weeks. The Energy sector fell
(7.5%) and again there was some real damage done
underneath the surface (that we will discuss in the Oil
section) as so much of the XLE portfolio is made up of
the big energy conglomerates (like XOM) that are not
as sensitive to energy price moves and so fell much
less (only down (1%)) than the more traditional E&P
companies and energy services companies. Perhaps
the biggest shift was in the Financials where the
decline in rates stirred up fears of lower Net Interest
Margins and some poor data on loan growth caused
XLF to shed (5.5%) over the past couple of months.
We talked a little more in depth about the Financials
in the 10 Surprises section of the last letter as we
believed that there was linkage between our view that
interest rates would resume their downward trend
(part of Surprise #1). We said that “one of the biggest
surprises in the aftermath of the election in the U.S.
was the rapidity at which the Bull Market in
Financials erupted once the rumors of more Goldman
Sachs appointments to the Cabinet were likely and
that the Dodd-Frank regulations had become Public
Enemy Number One of the new Administration. This
move shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone as
Financials always rally hard when rates rise suddenly
(as they did during the Taper Tantrum), but again the
media frenzy about this move was much more frenetic
than normal and the moves were much sharper.” It
really was amazing how everyone jumped on the
bandwagon that the thirty-five-year Bull Market in
Bonds was now officially over and that
Trumponomics was going to be highly inflationary
causing interest rates to soar and taking the Financials
to new heights. Everything was actually going
according to that narrative in the first few weeks
following the election and we wrote, “For perspective,
the Fab Four (or not so Fab Four if you look at the fact
that they have made no money for fifteen years), C,
JPM, BAC and WFC were up a dazzling 20%, 23%,
36% and 21%, respectively, in the five weeks following
the election.” In the #ATWWY Webinar in January
we actually presented a number of slides that begged
the question whether there could actually a durable
move in the U.S. bank stocks, or whether it was simply
another Hope Trade like the Reflation Trade that
would be subject to meaningful risk if the
Administration couldn’t actually follow through on
the promises. Curiously, since that mid-December
peak, the bank stocks had been stuck in a tight
channel and we wrote that “we are concerned that
there is a great deal of air between what has been
promised and what is likely to be delivered in coming
months, so we would not be adding to U.S. financials
here and there is actually a reasonable case to be made
for shorting them as their correlation to the 10-year
Treasury rates have been very high and if our Surprise
comes true on rates, the banks could wind up as
collateral damage.” As is usually the case, we were a
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few weeks early, but interest rates did continue to fall
after the March Fed meetings and the bank stocks
have gone from being longs to shorts, with C down
(2%), BAC and JPM both down (7%), MS and WFC
both down (8%) and GS down (10%) in March and
April. We see continued problems for the Financials
as slowing growth exacerbates all of the challenges
they face in a declining interest rate environment.
So, if Reflation is smashed and Financials are
collapsing, does that mean that investors are piling
into the Defensive sectors like Healthcare, Utilities,
Telecom and Consumer Staples? The answer is not so
much. While these sectors are some of the best
performers for the year, they are basically flat over the
past two months. The problem for Utilities, Telecom
and Staples is that valuations in these sectors are far
from cheap and in some cases are just as unattractive
(and dangerous) as the other bubbly segments of the
market. In fact, we are finally starting to see some
sanity creep back into investors’ behavior as
companies with declining sales volumes like General
Mills (GIS), Campbell’s Soup (CPB) and Hormel
(HRL) have shed (5.5%), (3.5%) and (1.5%),
respectively, since the beginning of March. The one
defensive area that did see interest, and is likely to
continue to surge, is Defense as the continued saber
rattling and geopolitical stress in the Middle East and
on the Korean Peninsula generate more revenue for
the arms dealers. Just as an example, replacing the
missiles launched at Syria will likely put close to $100
million in the coffers of Raytheon, so it should come
as no surprise that RTN cruised up 3% in the past
couple of months. GD was up 2%, NOC was up 1%
and BA was up 0.5%, slightly outperforming the flat
markets. Healthcare, on the other hand, continues to
be the whipping boy of the Administration to pick up
popularity points by tweeting about how drug prices
are too high any time Trump’s approval ratings
decline (which has been increasingly often of late).
What we continue to find odd though is something we
wrote about last time in that the proposals talked
about for lowering drug prices “require an act of
Congress and the dirty little secret no one seems
willing to talk about (or factor into prices) is that
Congress is controlled by Republicans and
Republicans are funded to a large degree by the
Pharma lobby so the likelihood that any of the
proposals would see the light of day in the Capitol
seems like a stretch.” Our primary view is that
healthcare, generally, will get released from sick bay
(Surprise #8) and be one of the top performing sectors
for 2017, but we also think there are sub-sectors that
could have breakout performances should investors
begin to focus on fundamentals again. One of those
sub-sectors is Specialty Pharma and we have discussed
how there is a bifurcation between “good companies
(read companies with real products that are not
bilking the system) like HZNP, HRTX, RTRX and
AVDL and bad companies (read companies with
fraud and/or are bilking the system) like ENDP and
VRX (everyone’s favorite to hate).” The upside
potential has continued to go undiscovered by
investors in 2017 and we would expect to see
significant gains over the course of the year as more
milestones are hit and more positive earnings are
released. One new development is that ENDP and
VRX have continued to get pounded this year,
crushed down another (35%), and the words of
Howard Marks are beginning to ring in our ears,
“there is no investment bad enough, that you can’t fix
by paying a really low price.” It’s not that there is no
bankruptcy risk in these names (there is), but
managements are incented to not let that happen and
to get the share prices higher (they have options like
asset sales, etc.), so it might be time to consider
covering the shorts and getting long (for perspective,
since the HRC tweet, ENDP is down (88%) and VRX
is down (96%)). Another sub-sector where we see
significant upside is Biotech. We wrote last time that
“the innovation that is going on in Biotech is nothing
short of miraculous and we expect to see some very
large fortunes created from areas like immunooncology, gene therapy with CRISPR, CAR-T
therapies and Biosimilars in the coming years.” That
said, investors don't seem to particularly care about
the future of healthcare right now and the while the
highest quality names like AMGN, CELG and BIIB
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have been able to keep pace with SPX the past few
months, some of the more speculative names like
GERN, TRVN, ACAD were down another (5%). We
singled out GILD last time as an anomaly where the
company has a drug that cures a disease (Hepatitis-C),
makes money, sells at a stupid cheap 7X P/E, but
continues to be punished for not having a better
pipeline, falling another 6%. The good news is that
GILD didn't make a ninth lower low (although it did
make a ninth lower high) and perhaps there will be
some interest in this company again soon.
Given that equity is about dreams, the companies that
can tell the greatest stories will be the most amply
rewarded. They will be given the highest multiples of
earnings (if they have earnings) and when they are
losing money they will be given lots of leeway to burn
up investors’ capital so long as they can spin fantastic
tales about how they are addressing some huge TAM
(total available market), gathering huge numbers of
DAU (daily active users) or Uber-izing some industry.
Clearly Technology and Consumer Discretionary are
the place to look for such fabulous storytellers and
history is replete with P.T. Barnum-esque promoters
who could convince investors to willingly suspend
disbelief and pile into stocks with very little inherent
underlying value. To be fair, there are plenty of these
stories that eventually work out and have happy
endings, but the one issue is that history is always
written by the winners. We hail the victors but never
do the accounting on the myriad losers that crash and
destroy investors’ hard earned capital. Yes, Apple was
started in a garage, but so were hundreds of other
companies that we have never heard of (and never
will) that weren’t fortunate enough to have great
leadership, ran out of capital before they could perfect
an idea, got outflanked by new technology or any
number of other reasons for business failure. All of
that said, when the Technology sector of the market is
running hard it is a thing to behold and we find
ourselves in one of those periods today. The
NASDAQ index has now surpassed the highs of 2000
(let that sink in for a minute, it is seventeen years
later, but more on that later) and Technology has
become the go-to sector for investors in 2017. XLK is
up more than double SPX for the year and, more
importantly for this section, is up 3.5% versus the
market being flat since the beginning of March. But
wait, there’s more! In every Euphoria phase of a Bull
Market we reach a point where there are a group of
stocks that become the “must own at any price” names
and investors pile into these companies regardless of
valuation (mostly because everyone else is) and new
narratives (some might call them rationalizations) are
created for why old fashioned concepts like valuation
and Margin of Safety are no longer relevant because
we have entered a New Paradigm. In the late 1960s it
was the Nifty Fifty (a relatively broad basket by today’s
standards) where the biggest Consumer brands
companies and Industrials were the best in the world
and you could not go wrong owning these great
businesses no matter what the price. We know how
that ended in the Recession of the early 1970s (really
badly) and the old saying is an old saying for a reason,
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” We saw a
similar phenomenon during the Tech Bubble when a
smaller group of companies became the buy at any
price favorites and companies like CSCO, MSFT,
ORCL and INTC pushed the NASDAQ index to a
peak of 5,048 on March 24, 2000 (astonishingly up
from 1,500 in October of 1998). In 2007, it was
another Feb Four, GRAAPLDU (GOOG, RIMM,
AAPL and BIDU) that went vertical as investors just
couldn't get enough of the BlackBerry craze (does
anyone still have a BlackBerry?) Today, it is the
FANG stocks (FB, AMZN, NFLX and GOOGL) that
are leading the parade in Technology and they have
screamed up in the past nine weeks, jumping 9%,
9.5%, 10% and 11%, respectively, making AAPL’s very
nice 6.5% return in a flat market seem quite ordinary.
Stepping back a bit to see the mania a little better, over
the past two years these stocks have run up an
astonishing 90%, 120%, 95% and 75%, respectively,
versus the SPX up 15% and NASDAQ up 22%. The
buy at any price mentality shows through in the P/E
ratios hitting 38X, 175X, 205X and 31X, respectively.
With the NASDAQ Index having just hit a new record
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of 6,100, clearly there must more going on inside
Technology than #FANG and it is true that there are
other Story Stocks like Tesla that have been surging
and make the FANG’s look like Utilities in terms of
returns. TSLA is up 42% in 2017, and up 23% since
the March, as the Teslarians (the devoted followers of
Elon Musk or #ElonAlmighty, as I like to refer to him
on Twitter) continue to pour money into the EV/
Battery/Data/Solar/Space/Tunnel company and sing
the praises of how Elon can lose nearly as much
money as Jeff Bezos in a quarter (the badge of honor
in the mania phase). Modifying the Bezosian quote
for Tesla, Musk is saying in so many words that they
lose money on every car, but make it up on volume. It
appears that losses are the new profits in the
Everything Bubble. We could probably write an
entire letter on the craziness of a car company (they
sell cars, which are depreciated assets and have no
network effect) trading with a software company
valuation, or how the capital intensiveness of the
business doesn't provide scale benefits like a consumer
electronics company and therefore they will not
generate profits or positive cash flow (even with funky
accounting), but that would not be a prudent use of
time. Suffice it say that we believe we are close to the
End Game in the TSLA saga, which means that while
there have been reports about all the money that short
sellers have lost betting against TSLA in recent years
(one report said $3.5B this year), we think the table is
turning and we would bet against this particular bean
stalk. One other area to touch on in Technology is the
Semiconductor space and we have commented in the
past that we think this is one area where the future is
extremely bright as we head toward the
interconnected world and the Internet of Things. This
sector has been hotter than hot in the past year and
semi stocks have been surging with MU, AVGO,
NVDA, LRXX, AMAT and XLNX up 15%, 5%, 1%,
26%, 14% and 6%, respectively, over the past couple of
months. While we think there is a lot of upside longterm in this area, there are a lot of high expectations
built into the prices, as AMD reminded us recently.
AMD reported Q1 EPS that were in-line with
projections and that showed strong growth, but they
didn't meet investors’ expectations for beating EPS by
enough and the stock was trashed, falling (20%) in a
day and down (32%) while all the other semi
companies have been rallying. This type of price
action is an example of the risks of investing in very
narrow markets where everyone owns the same stocks
and when there is disappointment, things can go from
really good to really bad really quickly.
So, with the sector discussion as the baseline for our
outlook, the big question we have to answer for U.S.
equities is whether the past two months are a pause
that refreshes in a Bull Market or the beginning of a
topping process to usher in a Bear Market. We
discussed at length in the last letter (Surprise #10) that
we believe there is a real chance that we end up in a
#WelcomeToHooverville scenario in the U.S. where a
confluence of events creates and economic and
market environment similar to 1929. We wrote last
time that “the first step in getting a [#1929Redux]
scenario would be to have equity market valuations
run from their current level of ‘silly’ to ‘stupid’
between the Inauguration and Labor Day (in 1929, P/
E ratios surged from 17X to 21X over this period to a
level not seen since 1860).” Using this jump in
valuation as a model, the question is what would drive
the markets from the silly valuation level of 25.4X
today (higher than all periods except the 2000 Tech
Bubble) toward the stupid levels of 31X (seen only
once in history)? We noted last quarter that “the
standard response today is that ‘Animal Spirits’ have
been revived by Trumponomics and there will be a
sharp acceleration in GDP growth (which is fairly
close to impossible mathematically as we have
explained in other parts of the letter), a surge in
corporate profits as tax rates and regulation are
slashed and a giant windfall gain from repatriation of
foreign cash hordes and fiscal spending.” In other
words, everything hinges on the #TrumpTrifecta
being completed, or at least on market participants
believing that it will be completed. When looking
back at the 1929 period, the DJIA surged 24% after
Hoover’s Inauguration to a peak of 381 on September
3rd and should history repeat, the S&P 500 would
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First Quarter 2017
surge to around 2,800 by Labor Day. We discussed
how that type of Bubble Top could form in the
#WelcomeToHooverville Surprise section, saying “for
that Euphoria to occur, market participants (using
this term intentionally because you lose your status as
an ‘investor’ when you knowingly buy assets with no
Margin of Safety) must believe that President Trump
will deliver on all the promises that Candidate Trump
made and (more importantly) they must believe that
the fulfillment of these promises will in some way lead
to higher growth, higher profits and ultimately higher
equity prices.” We went on to discuss how Seth
Klarman reminded us of the wisdom of Ben Graham
in our The Value of Value letter when he says that
when someone buys an asset with no Margin of Safety
they leave the realm of investor and enter the realm of
speculator. We talked specifically about how “Bubbles
are formed when market participants move from
Optimism (things are getting better) to Excitement
(things are really getting better) to Thrill (things are
great) to Euphoria (things couldn’t get any better),
and it is at that precise moment where you have the
point of maximum financial risk (and perversely the
point of maximum risk seeking behavior).”
The problem becomes worse when market
participants begin to accelerate their use of borrowed
money to buy stocks and we have seen new records set
in both margin debt and corporate indebtedness in
the past month. Speculative fever is alive and well and
we are seeing the same type of mania activity that we
witnessed in 1929 (and a few other times as well)
when any consideration of fundamentals is discarded
because the expected holding period is too short for
fundamentals to apply. As we discussed last time,
when this occurs “markets become locked in a
Reflexive virtuous cycle of new money pushing prices
higher that attracts new money that pushes prices
higher, lather, rinse, repeat, and the speculative fever
turns to a fear of missing out (FOMO) and a fear that
“everyone else is getting rich so I better get in
there” (didn't their mothers ever tell them about the
jumping off the bridge thing?).” What is interesting is
that the exuberance does not begin as irrational, but
rather builds from normal enthusiasm to a more
dangerous speculative fever and ultimately to an
irrational mania that ultimately becomes lethal to
investors’ wealth. George Soros says it best, “Stock
market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a
solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a
misconception.
Under
normal
conditions
misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets
tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a
misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in
reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets
under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its
false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the
bubble bursts.” We noted that Historian Charles
Geisst described the period leading up to the 1929
Crash this way, “Excessive speculation was creating an
inflated wealth and a sense of prosperity built upon
borrowed money.” We also noted that “in the decade
leading up to the peak in 1929, speculators
accumulated $8.5 billion of margin debt with which
they were buying stocks (sounds like nothing, but was
10% of total market cap, equivalent to $2.5 Trillion
today, inflation is a thief). One piece of data to
ponder here is that corporate America has issued
nearly that precise amount of debt (approximately
$2.4 trillion over the past five years) to buy back stock,
which in a sense is not very different than individuals
buying on margin” (and yes, individuals now have the
highest margin debt balances ever today too at just
over $540 billion). The final phase of an asset Bubble
is something to behold as the rationality of market
participants drains away at an accelerating rate and
prices begin to spiral higher in one final parabolic
move. When the Euphoria finally reaches a crescendo
the buzz in the markets is frenetic, value investors are
ridiculed as being old fashioned, and all attempts at
prudent behavior (read hedging) in managing
portfolios is met with cries of derision by clients and
the media.
With all of this as backdrop, if the S&P 500 were
continue to track the Hoover Bubble from 1929, the
index would run from the current level of 2,400 to
2,800 by the end of the summer, another 17% increase
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First Quarter 2017
(keep in mind, that is starting from all-time highs
already). If that were to occur, get ready for the
#FANG stocks at P/E ratios of 50X, 205X, 420X and
37X, respectively and the S&P 500 at an astonishing
31X (meaningfully higher than 1929 and not much
below that absolute insanity of 2000). When we hear
people use the 2000 levels of valuation to justify that
the S&P 500 is still “cheap” we think it sounds like a
driver who is pulled over for drunk driving who says
to the officer “I am not nearly as drunk as those guys
passed out in the back seat. Who else was going to
drive?” The reality is (obviously) is no one has to
drive (call a Lyft), and there is no one that says
investors have to be all-in at these levels of valuation,
but, alas the data says that investors are indeed fully
invested and actually getting more so for Fear of
Missing Out. Will share a few stats to show the level
of ebullience. There is 20X (read that again, 20X)
more money invested in levered long ETFs than
levered short ETFs, which shows that the average
investor sees no reason to be hedged (for perspective
that ratio usual fluctuates between 2X and 4X). The
ratio of II Bulls/Bears is 3.3, above two standard
deviations above average, and has a very high
correlation to equity corrections (highest ever is 5 in
1987 so actually could get more Bullish). The CBOE
Put/Call is at 1.6, right on the long-term average
neutral level, so there is plenty of room for more
euphoria here. The percentage of stocks in the S&P
500 above their 200-day moving average is now 80%,
having peaked in February at 89% (65% is the level at
which to get nervous). Equity Mutual Fund cash
holdings remain around 3% (well below normal) and
are at about as euphoric a level as we have ever seen.
Finally, U.S. household exposure to financial assets is
the highest it has ever been (ratio of financial assets to
income), exceeding both the peak during the Tech
Bubble and the Housing Bubble.
The premise of the #WelcomeToHooverville Surprise
is that sometimes the situation one finds themselves in
exceeds their experience level and talent and rather
than press a bad position, sometimes it is better to
withdraw and live to fight another day. We wrote last
time that “the road to hell is paved with good
intentions and while Hoover and the Republicans had
all the best intentions when they came to office, a
lethal combination of hubris, inexperience and
inflexibility led to the greatest collapse our country
has ever experienced.” Today, there are plenty who
don't believe President Trump and the Republicans
actually do have good intentions (but rather lots of
self-interest), but as recent events have shown, there is
plenty of hubris, inexperience and inflexibility to go
around in Washington today. So while we are not
ready to say we are headed for another Great
Depression, there are growing signs that some of the
same mistakes that occurred in 1929 are being made
again. For now, the momentum is still strong in the
markets and there is still a lot of confidence (struggle
with why given the first 100 day circus) that the
Trifecta will be achieved and everything is going to be
great. We remain unconvinced and believe it will pay
to be hedged as the year unfolds. We know Roger
Babson was right in 1929 and we believe his immortal
words should be headed again today.
Shifting over to the Bond markets ever so briefly (as
no one ever wants to talk about bonds) there is likely
to be a direct link between the direction of interest
rates and GDP growth in the U.S. (we could debate
endlessly which is the chicken and which is the egg)
and given our view that the Trifecta will continue to
be elusive, both will likely be lower than expectations
in 2017. We are already seeing lots of signs that point
to slowing growth and falling inflation and those
trends should produce better than expected returns
for bond investors over the full year. The best
segment of bonds for investors is likely to be the long
end of the Treasury curve (TLT) as the longer
duration produces more return when rates fall. As an
example, TLT has outperformed SPX since the
beginning up March (up 1.5% versus flat) and had
even taken a lead in the CYTD returns in mid-April
before rates backed up a little bit on more Hope that
there would be progress on Tax Reform. When it
comes to the continued Hope trade on growth, we
wrote last time that “the most serious problem with
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First Quarter 2017
the big promises of higher GDP growth in the U.S.
(and all the Developed Markets) is the horrible trend
in Population Growth (not enough babies being born)
and the Working Age Population Growth (WAPG), in
particular (too many people aging out of the work
force).” In the end, Nominal GDP growth is simply a
math exercise and we know the inputs are WAPG and
Productivity, so we know the output with a fair bit of
precision (which makes it all the more amazing that
the Fed in zero for 240 in GDP growth estimates…).
Since we know that both of these elements are in
secular decline at least through the mid 2020’s, it
seems odd that so many people in the Administration
continue to make promises that GDP growth will be
3% to 4% and that any losses in revenue from tax cuts
will be made up for in higher growth (it just can’t
happen). We discussed this dilemma last time, saying
“the punch (literally the knock-out blow for the
“Growth Hopers”) line is that Nominal GDP is highly
correlated with WAPG rates and therefore the
forecast is for growth to fall to 1% through 2030,
rebound back toward 3% by 2040 and then fade back
toward 2%.” Given the long-term trend in down, it is
highly likely that by the end of the year TLT could be
back in front of SPX in terms of returns.
With that said, we asked a question last time that still
applies “so if growth is going to stay extremely low
and Demographics are going to remain a headwind
for many decades into the future, why have global
interest rates surged so much since last summer and
why are all the Bond Bears declaring the end of the
Great Bond Bull Market again?” The answer is that
people want to believe that somehow someone can do
something to change the trend. What about all the
benefits of reducing regulatory red tape and reversing
all the burdensome regulations that were enacted in
the previous Administration? This makes for great
narrative, but there is very little evidence that there
has been much reduction in economic activity due to
regulation and there is even an argument that profits
are higher (we know margins have risen) because
higher regulatory burdens restrict new business
development and encourage consolidation (cost
savings from M&A) and lead to more monopolistic
profit levels. We can see this phenomenon in many
industries, so tough to make the case that there is
much benefit to be had from those potential policy
changes. On Tax Reform, the “plan” (more of a wish
list than a plan) that was released looks to be simply a
tax cut for the wealthy with no way to increase
revenues, which will increase the Deficit and slow
future economic growth (as and aside the selfinterested is appalling, specifically exempting Trump’s
RE operating structure and abolishing the Estate Tax
are worth huge sums to the Trump family). Finally,
even if there was some movement on Fiscal spending,
we know that government spending has a negative
multiplier and that it will result in higher debt levels
and lower GDP growth. When all is said and done, it
is simple to determine if the Bond Bull Market is still
intact, we wrote about the criteria last time saying
“this move in rates has been smaller than the move
during the Taper Tantrum in 2013 and despite rising
to just over 3% on the 10-year, rates made new lows
below 1.5% within a couple of years. That 3% number
is very important as it defines the last lower high
(Bonds have made a very long series of lower highs
and lower lows that define the downward trend) and
when we look at the “Chart of Truth” (the downward
channel in rates over the past few decades) we can see
that until rates break out past 3%, the primary trend
down remains intact.” Bond yields have touched 2.6%
a couple times since the Election, which is still a long
way from the magic 3% level and at 2.35% today the
downward trend is still in place. We know from
history that the Commitment of Traders data has been
a very good contrarian indicator of future returns
(people buy/sell what they wish they would have
bought/sold). As you would expect, pessimism in
Bond Markets reached highs in December and again
in March (almost precisely on the days of the peaks in
rates) and with the recent poor GDP report those
positions have completely switched to net long. What
this likely means is that we should see increases
pressure on rates in the near term as the hope (and
maybe even some real data) appears that Q2 growth
will be better than Q1 (it will) so it may mean that we
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First Quarter 2017
see bond yields slowly creep back up while the equity
bubble fully inflates over the summer and we reach
the breaking point in the fall. Given the recent bout of
extremely poor economic data, it would not surprise
us at all to get a few less bad numbers that people will
interpret (again) as good and they will infer that the
inflection point in Bonds is at hand (again). No
reason to fight against the short-term momentum, but
better to accumulate cash and wait for a better entry
opportunity. My good friend Grant Williams (writer
of Things That Make You Go Hmmm, @ttmygh) has a
perfect simple rule for times like these, “Prepare,
Persevere, Pounce,” and we will follow that sage
advice over the coming months.
Let us offer some very quick thoughts on High Yield
(or as I like to refer to them today Not So High Yield,
NSHY) bonds. In a very Roger Babson-like fashion
we will repeat what we said at this time last quarter,
and the quarter before, (obviously unnecessarily) that
NSHY bonds look unattractive, specifically we said,
“Despite the fact that corporate debt levels are at alltime highs and there are many companies with
suspect balance sheets issuing bonds, sure enough,
since the bottom in February, there have been record
inflows into HY bonds. Normally this kind of rush
into an asset class has been a contrarian indicator for
future returns, but not so far in 2016 as HY Bond
prices keep getting larger and the yield in “high yield”
We have been early
keeps getting smaller.”
(euphemism for wrong) on HY going all the way back
to the beginning of last year (we looked smart for
about six weeks in Jan and early Feb) and our
abundance of caution was costly as this segment of the
market generated very strong returns in 2016 and the
first two months of 2017. Like most other risk assets,
the return over the past two months has been less
robust, with HYG falling (1%) and while this is not
much of a turn, we keep coming back to what we
wrote in the The Value Of Value letter where “we
discussed a number of examples of what can happen
when investors pile into an asset class (or specific
investment) with no margin of safety, years of paper
gains can vanish quite quickly.” Paper gains are a very
dangerous thing, as they tend to cloud your judgment
and give you a false sense of security that you are
playing with house money (this phrase never makes
sense to us as if you take it off the table it is your
money and in a casino invariably if you leave it on the
table it returns to the house). Overconfidence makes
people do things they might not otherwise do and
ignore warning signs, as we said last time the biggest
problem with that approach to the markets is that
“sometimes when markets get truly and extremely
overvalued, they hit the wall with no skid marks.” We
will quote Bernard Baruch (again) here who
frequently said “I made all my money by selling too
soon”.
Europe
As we travel around the world today it has gotten
increasingly difficult to find assets that are fairly
priced, let alone that are cheap, but Europe has been
an exception. There are actually plenty of cheap
securities on the Continent courtesy of an elusive
economic recovery and the ECB QE Program not
having the same impact on stocks as the Fed QE
induced Bubble (all about transmission mechanisms).
Europe had been stuck in a Bear Market for many
years and while the U.S. markets keep making new
highs, European markets are still well off their highs
(in some cases still down double digits). We discussed
last time that “on top of the improvement in
fundamentals, Super Mario delivered his usual
summer boost by hinting at tapering and the hope of
higher rates, which was quite bullish for European
stocks, particularly the Financials.” Looking back to
last July, Super Mario’s jawboning worked wonders
once again as the Euro Stoxx 50 surged 28% (double
the quite strong 14% of the SPX) and EUFN
(European Financials ETF) soared 43%. It actually
wasn't just Draghi’s words this time as we noted in the
last letter that “one of the things that helped push
European market momentum back to positive was the
end of Negative Interest Rates across most countries
and the emergence of some inflation (after a very long
hiatus) in response to the massive balance sheet
expansion stimulus by the ECB.” In the first couple
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months of 2017, European equities tracked the U.S.
markets and even into the beginning of April there
was not much separation in return (at the index level,
there were some countries that were doing well,
particularly the PIIGS), but with the victory of
Macron over Le Pen in the French election, European
markets jumped 5% and some countries soared,
Greece up 8%, France up 11%, Spain up 15%, Italy up
11%, Portugal up 9%, Germany up 6.5% and Ireland
up 6% over the past two months (while the S&P 500
was flat). With the French election behind us, and the
veil of uncertainty lifted, it is likely that there will be a
torrent of money into Europe. The EU breakup risk
premium will vanish in the coming months and the
Euro will likely strengthen as well (extra benefit for
USD investors) as global investors who have been
underweight have to reallocate capital to the
Continent. Germany will benefit from being the
largest member (but there will be some headwinds
from a stronger Euro for their exporters), France will
benefit from being an outcast during the past year
while investors fretted about a Le Pen victory, the
Nordics could suffer a little from volatility on oil
prices and the PIIGS will benefit the most as they are
working off the lowest bases and any incremental
flows will push process up disproportionately.
Our Surprise #5 posited that European Financials
could be one of the best places to make money in
2017. We went so far as to write that “we believe that
European Financials could actually be the
“Commodities of 2017” and some of the returns
available to intrepid investors could be “generational”
just like last year in iron ore, copper, steel, MLPs and
E&P companies.” There were places where severe
dislocations had occurred (Italy, Portugal and Greece)
and we went further to say that “not only were Euro
Banks cheap, the attitude toward them was classic
Soros’ First Law material, as investors considered
them completely untouchable.” Soros’ Law says that
the worse a situation becomes, the less it takes to turn
it around and the greater the upside and there were
few places around the world coming into 2017 that
looked worse than European Financials. When things
look terrible, there is usually good value to be found
and intrepid investors will be amply rewarded for
taking the intelligent risk of buying the bargains that
emerge when those markets go on sale (Saldi, Saldi,
Saldi was the title of the Surprise). The combination
of the macro effects of a general positive tailwind from
the reversal of Narrative on Europe (from dissolution
to acceleration) and micro effects of the emerging
signs of more positive growth and stable inflation on
company profits could lead to significant gains in
coming quarters. There is one place that could get
another extra boost as well which we discussed last
time saying “we have talked about the Greek banks in
the past and we were early (read wrong) a couple
years ago, but we believe now they will reach an
agreement with the Troika and the upside potential in
Alpha Bank, Piraeus Bank, Euro Bank and National
Bank of Greece is truly outstanding.” Should the
Troika approve the debt restructuring (expected, but
not assured) and should the ECB actually include
GGB’s in the QE Program, the stage could be set for a
very powerful rally in these shares (and all Greek
equities as well).
Japan
When Prime Minister Abe came into office in 2012 he
set out a very ambitious plan to stimulate the Japanese
economy and equity markets, known as Abenomics.
The plan elegant in its simplicity (and theoretically
easy to implement); weaken the Yen to create
competitive advantages for Japan Inc., ramp Fiscal
spending to drive domestic economic growth and
initiate regulatory reform to spur innovation, business
formation and employment. In late 2012, Governor
Kuroda at the BOJ ramped up his purchases of JGBs,
the Yen fell, the Nikkei surged and everyone was
convinced that Abenomics was genius. Now four
years later there is less universal agreement on the
success of the plan as it has been challenging to
maintain the momentum from those early victories.
We came into 2017 convinced that Japan was going to
join the “whatever it takes” crowd and were
committed to reigniting the momentum in both the
currency market and the stock market. Surprise #3
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First Quarter 2017
this year was titled Kurve it Like Kuroda, named after
the head of the BOJ’s plan to pin the front end of the
yield curve at zero and steepen the overall curve in
order to continue to weaken the Yen and stimulate
growth. As a result of this plan, we said that it would
be a surprise to the markets if “the Yen continues to
weaken (with USDJPY approaching 130) corporate
profits surge to new record highs and Japanese
equities rally hard (particularly the Mega-Banks). The
Nikkei finishes the year at 22,000.” Sometimes the
best-laid plans don't go according to plan would be an
understatement for the first three and a half months of
the year in Japan. The currency markets were having
none of the weakening Yen story as the USDJPY
started the year at 118 and fell all the way to 108 by
the middle of April. In the equity markets, while the
rest of the world partied in the first two months of the
year, the Nikkei actually sold off in January, recovered
in February to be flat compared to global markets up
5% to 6%. Then the bottom really fell out and the Yen
strength triggered a wicked (6%) sell off through the
middle of April. When all looked bleakest, the Yen
finally turned and stocks followed, bringing the
markets basically back to flat after the first third of the
year.
Quo Vadis? Where do we go from here is the
question on global investors’ collective mind?
Economic growth has stabilized in recent quarters and
while it is not strong, it is positive and trending in the
right direction. Profits are very strong in Japan Inc.
and the equity markets are quite cheap on a P/E basis,
so further upside seems like a likely path. We talked
last quarter about one thing that has hampered
Japanese equities saying “another interesting point for
investors is that Japan remains very much out of favor
for foreign investors (usually a good contrarian
indicator). In fact, foreigners have been net sellers of
Japanese stocks over the past year, while local
Japanese investors have become large net buyers.”
Clearly a surplus of sellers is not a good thing, but the
track record of the foreigners in Japan is that they
tend to be net sellers right before the markets turn and
net buyers after the markets have run (typical). The
silver lining in the dark cloud is also that the BOJ has
basically stepped up and said that they will be the
buyers of last resort (they have been huge buyers of
ETFs and REITs over the past few years) and clarified
their intent, saying that they will buy more equities if
the economy continues to strengthen or if the
economy softens, so having the Central Bank
committed to being a buyer of stocks likely makes for
a solid market for the near term. Kuroda-san also
came out publically and reaffirmed his commitment
to the Yen arrow of the Abenomics plan. We wrote
last time that the “Japan investment strategy is fairly
straightforward today, buy Japanese stocks (hedged)
that benefit from a declining currency (banks and
exporters) as they truly have no way out but to
appreciably devalue the Yen over time given their
massive government debt burden and horrible
demographics. One thing people forget is that it
wasn't that long ago (30 years) when the Yen traded at
300 to the Dollar, so the idea of the USDJPY moving
to 135 or 150 would only be half way back.”
When writing about the Surprise, we said that it was
very clear that “Kuroda-san must be successful in
keeping the upward march of the USDJPY going in
order for us to hit our target for the Nikkei in 2017.
While we do have confidence that he will eventually
succeed, we are also wary that the move from 100
back to 118 in the back half of last year was very
abrupt and that there will likely be some consolidation
before we go higher. What this means is that we can
pick our spots to enter the market and don't have to
be in a rush to put all the money to work at once.”
From that point in January the USDJPY did indeed
strengthen even more, falling from 112 to 108 by the
middle of April, but has turned back up sharply to get
back to that 112 level in just a couple of weeks, so we
would say in it time to start deploying capital into the
Japan markets now. As we think about ways to invest
in the Japan markets, we recognize that there are some
very interesting companies in the Technology and
Services area that are attractive single name plays
(Nintendo and Sony for two), but as we said last time
“the primary play in Japan today is more Macro than
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First Quarter 2017
Micro at this point, so actually this is one market
where a good ETF (like DXJ or DXJF) can be an
appropriate option to capture the upside.” The
important thing about DXJ and DXJF is that they are
hedged, so as the Yen weakens you don't get hurt as a
USD investor. The other alternative is to buy the local
shares directly in Japan and hedge the currency
directly. We mentioned this last time in talking about
the banks saying “we also continue to like the Mega-
Banks, SMFG, MTU and MFG (these are the ADRs)
but you then need to hedge the currency, which can
be achieved by buying YCS (double short Yen) in a 2:1
ratio with the ADR holdings or selling short FXY in a
1:1 ratio (or you can hedge FX directly in other ways
too).” Finally, we want to reiterate something that we
discussed in the last letter that in the event that global
equity markets get nasty in the fall, all of Kuroda-sans
best efforts won’t be enough to stop the Yen from
strengthening as the global carry trade unwinds. We
wrote specifically that “another wildcard is that if we
do
get
a
really
bad
#2000Redux
or
#WelcomeToHooverville correction, the Yen is still
considered a safe haven (why we are not quite sure)
and it will strengthen in the heat of the down turn so
equity correlations will rise (even though based on
relative valuation and EPS growth they should fall)
and there will be a lower entry point if, and when, that
occurs.” So while Japanese stocks are the cheapest in
the Developed Markets, they would not be immune to
a decline if a real Bear Market were to develop in the
U.S. and global liquidity declined.
Oil
Our view on oil rally hasn't changed that much over
the past few months other than there has been more
data (and subsequent price action) that has affirmed
our primary thesis. In Surprise #4, we said that oil
prices would be range bound in 2017, saying
specifically, “global crude inventories remain
stubbornly high and prices fall back toward the
bottom of the New Normal, $40 to $60 range, before
bouncing back to end the year at $60.” One of the
core elements of the construct was that the likelihood
of the OPEC members sticking to the agreed upon
production cuts was, let’s just say, not high. In
looking at the data three months hence it is very clear
what actually happened was a game of ramping
production in the last months of 2016 only to “cut”
back to levels that are well above what is needed to
balance the oil market. From a base of 32mm barrels
a day, the OPEC members ramped up to 33.4mm
barrels and then “cut” to 32mm barrels which makes
it appear that they beat their own agreed upon target
(1.4mm versus 1.2mm), when in reality they are still
pumping at a level that is as high as they have ever
produced in history. These numbers also don't take
into account that the members routinely produce
above their reported numbers, so it is highly likely
that there is even more excess supply in the markets
than reported. We also thought that even if OPEC
would really production there was a high likelihood
that they would ramp production back up after the
seasonal maintenance was complete. We described
this tactic in more detail from the Saudi perspective,
saying “another issue that seems likely to rear its ugly
head is that Saudi Arabia has to take the lion’s share of
the cuts and there is some evidence from past seasonal
declines during maintenance season that they can talk
a good game about restricting production, but they
have continually ended up with a higher level of
production in each of the past five years despite the
protestations that excess supplies were harming
That scenario played out exactly as
prices.”
anticipated as Saudi cut in January and then increased
production in both February and March. So despite
the trumpeted success of the OPEC program, the
impact on actual supply has not materialized, as they
would have hoped, thus we have seen falling (rather
than rising) oil prices.
We described what seemed to be a rather elegant
move by OPEC to try outmaneuver the U.S. Shale
producers saying “another very interesting
development is that by OPEC unexpectedly agreeing
to the supply restrictions at the last minute, they had
the impact of raising the front month oil contract
much more than the out months (flattened the futures
curve), which is an important strategic move. A flatter
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First Quarter 2017
curve could cause some of the most highly leveraged
U.S. E&P companies to not be able to hedge forward
adequate production and raise new capital to expand
overall production, thereby taking some of the U.S.
supply competition off line. Immediately after the
announcement, the forward oil curve moved to a
degree of flatness that we had not seen since the GFC.
The plan was elegant in its execution, but once again
the resilience of the U.S. Shale oil producers
(particularly in the Permian basin) has been much
greater than the Saudi’s anticipated. In fact, one thing
that OPEC clearly did not anticipate was that U.S.
Shale producers would actually be able to ramp
production at the current price levels.” After U.S.
production declined to a trough of 8.3mm barrels a
day in June of last year, the Shale players figured out
how to aggressively cut costs and started to ramp
production again (defying all the predictions based on
declining rig counts) and finished the year at 8.9mm
barrels. Additionally, given the greater depth of the
oil futures markets, producers have become much
better at hedging future production. We have shown
a great chart in our #ATWWY Webinars that shows
how at $50 WTI, U.S. production would be 8.3mm
barrels this year and at $60 WTI, U.S. production
would surge to 9.6 million barrels (offsetting more
than half of the OPEC cuts). Given that oil stayed in
the mid-50s throughout most of Q1 it was not
surprising to us (but clearly was to OPEC) that U.S.
production ramped to 9.3mm barrels, completely
defeating the Saudi plot to flatten the futures curve.
As we described last time “Saudi made a huge
miscalculation in their analysis of the price it would
take to shutter production in the U.S. and they
seriously miscalculated the innovation that has been
going on in the oil patch to extract more
hydrocarbons from the same amount of surface area
acreage.”
Saudi wasn't the only one to underestimate the Shale
drillers as the oil Bulls have argued for a while that the
collapse of the U.S. rig would have a huge negative
impact on U.S. production, but they missed the
creativity of the oil patch. As we highlighted last time
“one example is that producers found that if they
crammed four times more sand down a well they
could double production. This is great news for sand
companies (which have been on a tear) like SLCA,
FSMA, EMES and HCLP, but not such great news for
rig owners as producers can get more output with
fewer active wells.” However, something very strange
happened in the sand companies in Q1. They were
bobbing along with the price of oil in January and
most of February (except for EMES which was up
90%) and then suddenly on February 22nd the mines
caved in and sand was no longer the new gold as the
Fab Four became the Fearsome Four and fell (30%),
(59%), (45%) and (35%) respectively through the end
of April. These are stunning drops and don't synch at
all with what we hear from our managers in the Texas
who have data showing sand usage soaring and likely
to only go higher as completion techniques continue
to improve. As we have said many times before,
investing is the only business we know that when
things go on sale, everyone runs out of the store. We
are doing our best to stay in the store here and buy the
discounted merchandise, but we will likely wait a little
bit to let those falling knives (or spinning drill bits)
come to rest on the floor before we go over and pick
them up. We also mentioned last time that the Shale
revolution “is really, really bad news for offshore-
related companies as it is much cheaper to produce
onshore than offshore and being short the ultra deepwater drillers and service companies that support the
offshore industry has been a great trade (and is likely
to continue to be a great trade). Companies like RIG,
SDRL, RDC, and ATW are just a few examples of
companies that are being dramatically impacted by
the stunning technological advances in U.S. Shale
production.” The bad news just kept coming for the
offshore drillers as over the past three months those
stocks dropped another (21%), (63%), (21%) and
(35%) respectively. The damage has been so great to
these names that some deep value oriented players are
beginning to make noise on the long side and there is
even some take private risk (might happen at a
premium) in staying short, but our favorite manager
still sees more downside so will stick with them (until
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First Quarter 2017
the trend changes).
We discussed last time how we recognized that we
were a little bit “out there” with our view on oil,
saying “there are a lot of very smart oil traders, oil
industry analysts and oil company executives who are
jumping on the bullish oil bandwagon, calling for $65
to $70 oil in 2017 and $85 or more in 2018. We even
saw someone make the dreaded $100 call for 2018.”
We also acknowledge routinely in this section that
“we are by no means oil experts and many of the
people we talk to, and invest with, have forgotten
more about oil than we will ever know”, but when we
look at the hard data (not the headlines coming from
OPEC), we still don't see how oil markets get back to
supply/demand balance any time quickly. With huge
oil surpluses in the U.S. (highest ever), stubbornly
high global crude stocks (highest ever) and now
reports of slowing in storage construction in China,
we can’t see how a small supply cut can bring the
market back into balance. It seems to us that without
a dramatic increase in oil demand the data seems to
indicate that oil markets won’t balance before late
2017, early 2018. On top of that, there is rising risk
that some sort of global economic slowdown could cut
the demand projections even further. We described
the straw that broke the camel’s back for us last time
saying “another troubling factor for the uber-bullish
camp is that traders are already at their highest net
long exposure to oil futures since the 2014 peak (so
where will the buyers come from?), we know from
history that the COT futures data is a tremendous
contrarian indicator for oil prices.” As usual, this
indicator worked like a charm and oil prices have
weakened in recent months. Interestingly, the COT
data now shows speculative long positions have
declined somewhat, but remain at twice the long-term
average (as a percentage of total inventories).
Our last concerns about oil prices came from the
currency markets and we discussed how “there is the
troubling alligator jaws pattern that developed
between the Dollar and oil prices in the days following
the OPEC Agreement. For many years the Dollar and
oil prices were highly inversely correlated (Dollar up,
Oil down; Dollar down, Oil up) and you could get a
good sense of where oil prices were headed by the
primary trend of the Dollar. Looking at the long-term
correlation charts, with the DXY around 100, oil
should be in the $30’s (rather than $52).” DXY has
actually fallen just a touch to around 99, so the chart
would probably place oil prices in the high $30’s now,
and with the recent fall to $47 (after hitting as low as
$45 briefly) the gap is closing. We also discussed the
correlation with the Euro saying “the other indicator
that has tracked oil prices very well has been the
USDEUR with a six week lag and with the Euro at
1.07, oil should be somewhere around $40.” The Euro
actually fell as low as 1.05 (oil in the $30’s), but has
rebounded back to 1.09 (and likely headed higher with
the Macron victory) that could bode well for oil prices
in the summer. Two new concerns have entered the
mix this week having just returned from spending
time with Raoul Pal at his GMI Roundtable event (if
you are looking for something to subscribe to for
Macro insights this is one of two we would
recommend) and he presented a compelling case for
$20 oil using a combination of the recent break in
twenty-year trend line and an analysis of the real
(inflation adjusted) price of oil over the last century.
He also references the huge imbalances in the COT
data and says that a break below $45 means it is time
to “look out below”. Lastly, there was a ruckus in the
oil markets last week as rumors were swirling that one
of the large oil traders was liquidating their long
positions.
It has been confirmed that Pierre
Andurand did indeed sell his long positions in
keeping with his risk management discipline to scale
out of positions (long or short) when the markets run
against them. Pierre remains bullish over the longterm for oil prices and one thing we have learned over
the years is to never mess with the Andurand (play on
don't mess with the Zohan movie) as there are very
few oil traders in the world as skilled as Pierre, so
while he may be having a down period this past
quarter, history says to allocate capital to someone
with a spectacular long term track record who has just
had a tough short-term period. So with all those
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First Quarter 2017
inputs, we will stick with our “New Abnormal” range
of $40 to $60 for WTI and as we wrote last time “we
million dollar fortune over a lifetime) and we believe
the same is true in investing. We said last time that,
would expect to see oil prices near the $40 bound at
least once this year and would expect prices to drift
back toward the $60 bound by the end of the year.”
“If you can get in front of major trends and you have
patient capital, you will outperform dramatically
versus most other strategies. The real key to making
large, long-term, returns is having patience (and a cast
iron stomach) to whether the inevitable ups and
downs in the price of an asset over time as the view of
Mr. Market (volatile) moves away from Fair Value
(quite stable).” Little did we know that this letter
We may be in the midst of that trip toward $40 right
now, so as we get closer we will likely expand our
exposure. We repeat our advice from last time “from
a Macro perspective be a buyer of oil at the lower end
of the range and be a seller at the upper end and from
a Micro investment perspective we continue to like
the Permian producers like RSPP, FANG, PXD, PE
and the MLPs that have pipeline assets serving the
Permian like ETE, ETP, PAA & PAGP.”
EM
We came into 2017 (as we had left 2016) very positive
on Emerging Markets for a number of reasons
ranging from better growth dynamics, lower
valuations (always great when you can buy better
growth at lower prices), strong momentum from a
robust recovery in 2016 and what we believed was a
temporary downturn (EM went on sale) in the
aftermath of the U.S. election where the rhetoric from
Team Trump had spooked EM investors. We were
also quite excited about the potential for EM because
very few other investors were positive on these
markets due to fears about the Fed raising rates and
geopolitical risks around the world and we always like
to find places where there are fewer fisherman in the
stream. Our 10 Surprises try to create scenarios that
we believe are out of consensus and that we expect
have a better than 50% chance of occurring (as
Steinhardt says, make all the big money from Variant
Perceptions that turn out to be right), so we made EM
the subject of Surprise #9, titled Willy Sutton Was
Right and said “The positive momentum spreads
beyond just the commodity producing countries that
surged in 2016 and the rising tide lifts all boats across
Emerging & Frontier markets.” We told a story last
quarter about one of our original client meetings
where the patriarch of the family said his method of
creating wealth was to buy land in the path of progress
and wait (simple enough to create a multi-hundred
would be about the creator of the Mr. Market
construct and that Graham’s philosophy of patience
and discipline would be such a critical component of
our current emerging markets outlook. The problem
for most Emerging Markets investors is that they are
an “asset with fantastic long-term potential, but also
high degrees of volatility, so the average investor
never gets to realize the benefits of the path of
progress and growth because they overtrade and sell
after every big drawdown (and worse buy back in after
the big run up).” Being able to follow Graham’s
discipline to only buy bargains (when things go on
sale) is much harder to execute that it is to recite and
we discussed last time that an alternative approach
might make sense too, when we wrote “maybe the best
answer is buy great companies that focus on capturing
EM growth early and just lock them in a drawer and
don't look at them (even better buy them in the
private markets and hold on to them after they go
public)” (should readers have interest in the private
markets, we can help with that given our extensive
experience and relationships in the emerging
markets).
Why would it be that most investors had a difficult
time buying and holding great companies for long
periods of time? Perhaps the biggest challenge is that
the long-term upward trend in Emerging Markets has
been divided into meaningful periods of time where
investors favor EM over DM and periods where they
favor DM over EM. We have observed that there is a
cyclical rhythm to this flow of sentiment that plays out
over a past fourteen year period with nearly perfect
symmetry of a classic Kindleberger Seven Year Boom/
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First Quarter 2017
Bust Cycle. Beginning with the recovery that began at
the end of Q1 last year, we would expect to see EM
outperform DM over the coming six years. Buying
things when they go on sale is very satisfying (not to
mention more fun). As we have written many times
over the years, “we have always been Value investors
at heart and we like to buy things below their Fair
Value and even better, when they are really cheap.”
The great news today is that EM as a group is the
cheapest major market in the world with a forward P/
E of 12.1X (stupid cheap) relative to Japan at 13.8X
(silly cheap), Europe at 14.9X (cheap) and the U.S. at
18X (not cheap). Importantly, we discussed last time
how “on top of being cheap, the growth rate of
earnings is much higher, so you get the double benefit
today of buying faster growth at cheap prices (which is
nice).” Valuation is an interesting investment tool as
it is actually quite predictive of future returns over
long periods of time, but not really great over short
periods of time. The problem is that in the shortterm, cheap things can get cheaper and expensive
things can get more expensive. One of the best longterm predictor of returns (and maybe the worst shortterm predictor) is the CAPE ratio (Cyclically Adjusted
P/E), which looks at trailing ten-year earnings in
order to remove the volatility of the current year
earnings (which can be very cyclical). One other
caveat is that the CAPE ratio is more effective on
regions and countries and less effective for individual
companies.
Looking at current CAPE ratios around the world
today paints an ugly picture for DM investors. The
U.S. is the most overvalued of the major markets with
a 3/31/17 CAPE of 27.5, which implies a forward
return over the next decade of 3.6% (with a 50%
confidence interval of 1.6% and 5.6%, meaning there
is a 25% chance the return could be outside that
range). Japan (contrary to some other short-term
indicators) is not much better with a CAPE of 24.9
and an expected return of 4.4%, while Europe looks
modestly better at 17.6, that implies a 6.8% expected
return for the decade. The PIIGS have significantly
lower CAPEs and much better return expectations
(they are cheaper) with Spain at 13.4 and an expected
return of 8.7% and Italy at 13.9 and an expected
return of 8.5%. Hong Kong is on the fringe between
the DM and the EM (gateway to China) and the
CAPE of 16 implies a forward return of 7.5%. The fun
starts when we look at EM, as the BRICs look quite
attractive with CAPE ratios for Brazil at 10.7, Russia at
5.3 (the lowest in the world by an order of
magnitude), India at 20.3 (always looks high due to
heavy tech weight in Index) and China at 14.4. These
below average CAPE ratios imply above average
returns for EM investors over the next decade, as
India should compound at the lowest rate of 6.1%, but
China should be closer to 9.5%, Brazil should come in
at 10.6% and Russia should beat everyone with a
15.5% return for the next ten years (turns $1 in to
$4.22). To reiterate, these forecast returns are not
useful over short periods of time (one to three years),
but they have been very accurate over the decades.
There logic that is difficult to debate that buying at a
low valuation will yield a better return than buying at
a high valuation (absent a dramatic difference in
growth rates). Unfortunately for DM investors
(Hopers), both revenue and earnings growth is
unlikely to surprise to the upside (poor
demographics), so EM should have a significant
comparative advantage and likely tailwind in that
regard as well.
There are a number of other indicators pointing to
potential for positive returns in EM equities in the
coming quarters and years. These indicators have
proven to be very reliable predictors of relative
strength over time and including the Citibank
Economic Surprises Index (CESI), overall Liquidity
provided by financial institutions through lowering/
raising interest rates (tracked by CrossBorder
Capital), Inflation, the U.S. Dollar and Commodity
Prices (within the broader Commodity Cycle). There
has been a lot of discussion of the CESI in recent
quarters centered around whether the Index is
actually a leading or lagging indicator and to what
extent the sentiment components can swamp the hard
data components over time. The data is mixed and it
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also varies by region (likely due to quality and
sophistication of the data) so the jury is still out, but
our experience with the EM CESI is that it does tend
to be a leading indicator and it exploded higher last
year and has correctly forecast strong returns in EM
over the past year. The one downside in the near term
is that the CESI is consistently cyclical (what goes up
must come down), so there is some likelihood that the
brisk tailwind turns to a bit of a head wind in coming
quarters. Overall liquidity is perhaps one of the most
critical components of equity returns in any markets
as it is tough to “fight the Central Bank” and when
banks are withdrawing liquidity (raising rates) returns
will be lower and when banks are supplying liquidity
(lowering rates) returns will likely be higher. Across
the Developing Markets we see ample liquidity in the
markets already and additional impetus for EM & FM
Central Banks to continue to cut rates going forward.
The CrossBorder Index levels are as high as they have
been since 2004 and they tend to run in seven-year
cycles, so we could see this tailwind persist for a
meaningful period of time. Inflation is one of those
Goldilocks indicators as you need to have the “just
right” amount, not too much to cause Central Bank
tightening and not too little to worry about slowing
growth and deflation. The good news in EM & FM is
that Inflation is in that perfect zone in most regions
and countries (with a few notable exceptions like
Venezuela) and most importantly the deflationary
readings in the PPI that had plagued China for the
past few years have finally reversed and that has
historically been very good for EM returns. We
discussed last time how “EM equity has been inversely
consumption weak Dollar is bad for them…). There is
also growing evidence that we have reached the end of
this cyclical increase in the Dollar and we will revert
back to the secular decline that began in the 1970s
(this is the third peak that has made a lower high).
Finally, the EM currencies were obliterated during the
2011 to 2016 Bear Market, so they are set up nicely to
strengthen in the coming years as the growth
differentials expand. Weaker Dollar equals higher EM
equities, all else equal, so we like the tailwind here. A
weak Dollar also has been correlated to higher
commodity prices and we believe that a new upturn in
the Commodity Super Cycle is beginning. Rising
commodity priced have been good for EM
historically, but as many EM economies move away
from production and manufacturing toward
consumption this direct linkage will not be as strong,
so we will have to be more discriminating about
choosing between EM countries as this cycle unfolds.
Last quarter we described a very interesting technical
pattern that had emerged in the EM index and
discussed how it appeared that the momentum had
shifted positively in favor of continued gains. We
wrote “when we look at the EM Index over the past
correlated to the Dollar and positively correlated to
commodity prices over the long term and there has
been a strong cyclicality to these assets over time
(follows the seven year cycle).” The Dollar has
year, despite the strong recovery in 2016 there has
been volatility around the uptrend and that volatility
has created a falling wedge pattern (technical pattern)
that normally indicates that a dramatic move is about
to happen. The only problem is that the move can be
up, or down, and breaking the trend line in either
direction can trigger that strong move. Right after the
Trump surprise, the Index headed for the bottom of
the wedge and (fortunately for our view) bounced
right off the bottom and has now burst through the
top of the wedge here in January, which should be a
good confirmation of the uptrend.” EEM continued
weakened since peaking a few weeks after the election
as market participants have realized that the Trump
Trifecta was not imminent, the Border Tax
Adjustment Plan was DOA and just about every
member of the Administration has come out in favor
of a weaker Dollar (ostensibly to pander to the base
about saving jobs, despite fact that with 70%
that trend over the past three months and surged
7.5%, well ahead of other global equity markets. As
we looked around the EM universe in January we
divided the world into compelling stories and places
to avoid and much of that distinction was based on
the leadership of the respective countries. Our thesis
was that good leadership was generating strong
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returns (Argentina, India, and Russia) and bad
leadership was destroying value (Philippines, Nigeria,
Turkey). We described the problem as follows, “the
places to avoid in EM share one thing in common,
bad leadership (maybe another reason to avoid the
U.S., more on that below) and there can be other
challenges as well ranging from currency woes
(current account problems), potential trade issues (if
Trump picks a fight) or economic malaise, but the
bulk of the problems can always be traced back to bad
leadership.” We saw some very strong returns from
the places with strong leadership as India surged 16%
and Argentina jumped 12% over the past three
months, but oil price declines and the Syria tensions
sunk Russia, which fell (2%). But a funny thing
happened in the bad leadership markets, Turkey
actually soared 18%, the Philippines was up 4% and
only Nigeria stayed locked in the downtrend, falling
another (4%), also a victim of lower oil prices. We
commented that there was an emerging risk of this
kind of melt-up last time when we wrote “one caveat
to always remember (especially in EM) is that when
things go bad and prices really get hammered, there
does come a time when the discount to Fair Value is
so great, and the Margin of Safety becomes so large,
that even though it seems dangerous it is time to buy.
Lord Rothschild said the time to buy is “when blood is
running in the streets” and Sir John Templeton
frequently reminded those who asked him “where is
the best place to invest?” that they were asking the
wrong question, that they should ask “where is it the
most miserable?” Ben Graham was right again, when
the bargain is so great, it is time to remember you are
buying stakes in a business and when you can buy
those stakes at a monster discount, so long as there is
no going concern risk, you have to back up the truck.
Contrary to all the media coverage of how Erdogan is
a bad guy (he is), people in Turkey continue to use the
banking system, eat in restaurants, talk on the phone
and use the utilities, so the old saw that you make the
most money in EM when things go from truly awful
to merely bad came true again.
When we look around the EM world today and
compare these markets to the DM markets, which
have been flat since March, we see some places where
momentum has turned up sharply and we would
expect continued gains as prices move back toward
fair value. Mexico is a great example as the market
has surged (up 10% in past two months) on the back
of softer rhetoric out of Washington and a sudden
recovery in the Peso. Korea is another example where
the turmoil around the ouster of their President on
corruption charges has spurred an impressive rally
(up 5%) and we would expect to see even better
returns as they move toward electing a new President,
the N. Korea tension dissipate and the semiconductor
market continues to rock along. Taiwan is another
market that has caught a tailwind as the Apple
upgrade cycle has strengthened demand for
components and that is the specialty of many of the
Taiwanese listed companies (Index actually trades like
a U.S. technology proxy). India continues to knock
the cover off the ball as an incredibly strong long-term
plan in taking root and producing a massive
reintegration of the black markets into the traditional
economy thanks to the biometric ID program and
Demonetization, so the huge injection of liquidity into
the banking system should spur growth for years to
come. After another 8% run in the past two months,
don't be surprised by a pause that refreshes, but buy
every dip in this market, particularly in the financial
service sector. Frontier markets have also been very
strong and there are lots of stories within FM that are
exciting, from the benefits of OBOR to places like
Pakistan (don't forget MSCI Inclusion here too), to
the most miserable places that are due for a recovery
like Egypt and Nigeria (which has actually begun to
recover, jumping 5%), to Saudi that could explode
higher should they actually get included in the next
round of MSCI Index consideration. We have talked
about the Saudi story on many occasions and today it
really does come down to the Inclusion decision. So
with a positive overall view on EM & FM, we reiterate
a point we made last time, that “there is one spoiler
alert in EM that we have to pay attention to and that is
should there be a meaningful dislocation in the
Developed World (a surprise in European elections, a
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First Quarter 2017
spat between Trump and Mexico, or worse Iran,
Recession it the U.S. etc.) EM equities will struggle in
the short term (correlations do go to one in down
turns) and it might be better to ease into positions and
save some cash to buy at cheaper prices.” We are in
that seasonal segment of the year where equities have
struggled historically (May to October), so continuing
to focus on buying what goes on sale during the
summer should be the optimal strategy in the coming
quarter.
We have been constructive (pun intended) on China
for a while and with the commitment to the One Belt,
One Road project, the path of progress will run
squarely through the Middle Kingdom for many years
to come. We discussed OBOR in Surprise #6 last time
when we wrote “China has embarked on a historic
infrastructure program, the One Belt, One Road
(OBOR) project that will recreate much of the ancient
Silk Road trade routes all across Europe, Africa & S.E.
Asia. This massive undertaking will trigger Bull
Markets in stock markets all across the region, as well
as in industrial commodities needed to complete these
enormous construction projects.” The Chinese always
think long-term and they always think big, so it is no
surprise that they have undertaken a project of such
epic proportions (these are the same people that built
the Great Wall after all) and they have always
understood the need to build infrastructure ahead of
the growth and urbanization in order to boost
economic growth, create jobs and foster trade. They
also understand very clearly how to creating strong
political and economic relationships with the
countries in the region will cement their power base
and expand their addressable markets. We have often
written about how the Western Media (and Western
Investors) have consistently underestimated the will
of China to become a (someday the?) global Super
Power and we specifically wrote last time that “one of
the most interesting things to us about China today is
how much negativity there in the Western media and
how the Narrative is always that China is on the verge
of economic, financial and societal collapse (despite all
evidence to the contrary), yet China just keep
plugging along focused on their long term goals and
plans (they think in decades while the rest of the
world thinks in months and years).” So while the
China Bears complain that the data isn’t real, the
Chinese are not as sophisticated as Westerners and
that China is perpetually on the precipice of a crash
(hard landing thesis), we continue to focus on the
resilience of the GDP growth, retail sales growth,
industrial production strength and, most importantly,
the rising strength of the services sector as they
transition the economy from manufacturing to
consumption. One of the most notable developments
this year is how an Index of Chinese economic data
(electricity usage, car sales, exports and imports etc.)
constructed by a U.S. research house to try and show
how the Chinese were overstating their GDP growth
actually turned out recently to show that the China
GDP number might be materially understated! The
thesis is that perhaps the Chinese don’t want to show
the actual growth accelerating for fears of fanning the
flames of the China-doubters who will say that faster
growth (just like they said slower growth) is a sure
sign of imminent collapse. In the end (just like on
Twitter) Haters are going to hate.
We also discussed last time how the OBOR project
will have collateral effects on the rest of the region
from Southeast Asia to Africa and Europe and that
markets like India, Vietnam, Pakistan, Russia and
Saudi Arabia would be positively impacted by the new
growth as the project kicks into gear. There clearly
have been meaningful increases in a number of these
markets and we would expect the trickle-down effect
to continue for many years to come. We also
discussed how a project of this scale and scope would
be massively positive for the commodities markets
and we wrote that “clearly one asset class that will
(actually has already) benefit greatly from a massive
infrastructure project is Commodities. China has set
new records for imports of Iron Ore, Copper and Oil
in recent months and in what might be one of the
most important changes in Chinese Policy in many
years, they actually have shut down capacity in China
where production of certain commodities (iron ore,
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coal, etc.) where the companies were not competitive
The 2016 recovery on
and losing money.”
commodities can easily be linked to the China
stimulus programs and increased spending on OBOR
and we saw very robust recoveries across many of the
industrial metals markets as we came into the New
Year. We also talked about how these moves can
become Reflexive as the rising prices stimulate
demand (buy now before prices get too high) saying
“one of the things that happens in commodity
markets is that many trend following systems and
technical analysis systems will see these moves as buy
signals and that increased demand will reflexively feed
on itself and create a virtuous cycle of rising demand
as the rising prices attract new buyers (which raise
prices, which attracts new buyers…). In other words,
we may be on the verge of another Commodity Super
Cycle beginning.” One development that bears
watching very closely is how in recent weeks these
industrial commodities prices have reversed very
sharply and given back all the gains they made in the
weeks following the U.S. election. It appears (and
there is some data leaking out of China to confirm
this) that a wave of Chinese money was placed into
commodity futures markets (some of it through the
Wealth Management Products channel) in October
and November and Coal, Iron Ore and Copper prices
surged. The Narrative of the Global Reflation Trade
became very loud and lots of capital flowed into
commodity markets and commodity related equities.
In the last few weeks, all of those trends reversed with
severe damage inflicted across the commodity
complex. There is one school of thought that the large
credit impulse and stimulus package that the PBoC
instigated last year has been like a pig in a python and
you never want to be near the tail end at the end of
that process. While we think this is a short-term
phenomenon, it could be ugly for a little while before
the long-term focus returns.
The final point we made last quarter was that “Chinese
equities are compellingly cheap and the H-Shares
(Hong Kong) are the cheapest of all of the exchanges.
What is missing is a catalyst to trigger the rerating.
One thing to remember is that the Chinese A-Share
market (locally listed in RMB) is the second largest
equity markets in the world ($8.2 Trillion market cap)
and has a zero (yes, you read that right) weighting in
the MSCI Indexes. That will change. It could change
as early as this year (but more likely 2018 for political
reasons). The time is now to make plans for how to
integrate this market into portfolios.” Since then the
Chinese markets have been relatively strong with
Hong Kong up 9%, FXI up 5% and only the A-Shares
have lagged, basically flat over three months. AShares investors are still waiting for MSCI to get off
the dime and include the second largest equity market
in the world in the Indices (for political reasons might
not happen in June so will have to wait another year).
Our favorite sector, e-Commerce has been completely
on fire as investors finally acknowledged that
consumer growth is very different than industrial
growth and the margins in these businesses are huge,
so names like BABA, JD and VIPS surged 14%, 24%
and 22% respectively and we would expect to see
more gains in this space as growth becomes harder to
come by around the world. These are clearly not
Value names and Ben Graham might roll over in his
grave for even thinking about owning names at these
valuations, but there is always room for a little growth
exposure in a portfolio.
So to summarize our world view quickly we would
begin with the premise that the current investment
climate is such that Cash in King and having a high
level of cash will be very useful to acquire assets at
lower prices in the future, in other words, the option
value of cash is very high today (like in 2000 and
2008). We also believe that there will be continued
downward pressure on interest rates as the Killer D’s
of Demographics, Debt and Deflation continue to
suppress economic growth and therefore holding
some position in long duration treasuries should
prove to be an effective store of value and overall
market hedge. When looking at equities broadly, we
favor Emerging Markets, Europe, Japan and the U.S.
in that order and would reverse the current
capitalization weightings from the MSCI ACWI Index
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First Quarter 2017
to skate to where the puck is going as the developing
markets continue to grow their market capitalization
in relation to their share of global GDP. We continue
to believe that the best place for investors to make
outsized returns is in the private markets (private
equity, VC, private energy, private RE and private
Debt) and that whatever weight an investor has been
comfortable with for a private weighting, double it. It
is also a time to get hedged and we believe that hedge
funds will cease to be a dirty word over the coming
decade as returns on traditional investments (Beta)
will be very poor (likely near zero), while the returns
to Alpha will continue to be significant (likely 5% or
more above cash).
Since this letter is about Intelligent Investing it seems
appropriate to reprint the section on our Bonus
Surprise from last time that addressed why we think
Active Management is about to make a serious
comeback (a la Tom Brady in the Super Bowl). So
simply cut and pasted from the last letter (no full
italics so easier to read) here it is.
Bonus Surprise:
Demise of Active Greatly
Exaggerated
For the 4th time in my career (and I am not that old)
Active Management (and Hedge Funds) has been
declared “Dead,” as Passive strategies outperformed
again in 2016. Similar to previous periods of Central
Bank largesse, the math of capitalization weighting,
exacerbated this time by “Dumb” (read rule based)
Beta ETF strategies, favored passive momentum
strategies since QE began in 2009. People always “buy
what they wish they would have bought” and poured
record amounts into Index Funds & ETFs in 2016
(#PeakPassive), just in time for Active Management
(and HF) to outperform in 2017 (just like 2001).
We opened that Q3 section on Hedge Funds with the
following paragraph and it seems to set the stage very
well for this Bonus Surprise. Over the long-term the
hedge fund managers have historically outperformed
(by almost a 2:1 ratio over four decades), primarily we
will argue because the nature of every industry is that
the most talented professionals migrate to the place
where they can maximize their compensation. The
best doctor, lawyer, football coach or basketball player
always makes the most money. Capitalism works.
Professionals produce superior results because they
have an Edge. They practice more, they have better
coaching or they have better equipment, whatever that
edge may be. We discussed last time how Edge in the
investment management business can come from
many different places, better technology, better
analytics, better process, better people, better
networks or some combination thereof. We also
wrote that “Edge does not come cheap and the genius
of the Hedge Fund model (propagated by A.W. Jones
and discussed in our letter titled A.W. Jones Was
Right) was it provided superior levels of fees which
allowed hedge funds to acquire the best talent and
resources, develop the best networks and build the
best systems.” We are such staunch proponents of the
hedge fund asset management model because we
believe it aligns the interests of the manager and the
client insofar as the incentive is not to raise huge
assets to gather huge fees (as size is the enemy of
Alpha), but to limit size and charge an incentive fee
structure so that when the client wins, the manager
wins. There will always be examples of where this
relationship breaks down (either manager doesn't
acquire edge to generate Alpha or gathers too many
assets and dilutes ability to generate Alpha) but, the
client can always choose not to maintain capital with
that manager. Periodically (as noted above) we go
through a period of time (like today, usually caused by
Central Bank easing) where hedge fund strategies
underperform and a cacophony builds that they have
lost their Edge, “that they have become “rich and
complacent”, that “Active Management is dead”, that
there is “too much money chasing the same ideas” and
myriad other negative “explanations” for why the high
fee strategies are underperforming the low fee
strategies and why everyone should immediately fire
all the high fee managers and only buy Index Funds
and ETFs.” We are there now and what we know from
nearly three decades of allocating capital to managers,
these are the best times to maintain discipline and
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allocate to managers who have strong long-term track
records (demonstrated Edge), but have just had a
difficult short-term period. The key to success it to
“do the opposite of what the media reports that the
big Pensions are doing. They hired hedge funds after
the Global Financial crisis (chasing their strong
relative returns) and are selling now to buy Passive
strategies (chasing their CB steroid induced strong
relative returns).” As we like to say, we’ve seen this
movie before and, spoiler alert, it ends badly.
If you are looking for Despair, Despondency and
Depression in the investment universe (where Soros
says you should look to buy bargains), you need to
look no further than Active Management and Hedge
Funds (and in particular Long/Short Equity funds) as
they just finished one of their worst years ever relative
to the Passive benchmarks and trailed for the seventh
consecutive year. If you read the popular press today
you might think this is the first time this has
happened (it isn’t, it is the fourth such cycle in the
past 30 years) and that things have never been this bad
for Active Managers’ relative performance (it has been
on multiple occasions). There is a natural cycle (about
seven years) to markets where they rotate between
periods that favor Active Management and periods
that favor Passive Management. In the most basic
terms, Active (and Hedge Funds) tends to outperform
when markets are challenging (flat or down) and
Passive tends to outperform when markets are
ebullient (rising, and Passive wins the most when the
Fed is stimulating the economy). The simplest
explanation is that Passive strategies are
“Dumb” (meaning they are rules based, not
unintelligent) and they must buy the assets in their
Index/ETF list regardless of valuation (they are not
allowed to think or use judgment) and the
capitalization weighting structure of most Indexes
makes it even worse (they are forced to buy more of
the most overvalued assets). The momentum nature
of Passive nearly ensures victory over Active when
markets are rising, but as the markets get increasingly
more dangerous at the tail end of the bull market they
also ensure that the losses during the inevitable
correction will be much worse (Active managers are
allowed to think and retreat from the most egregiously
overvalued assets before they go over the cliff). As
you might expect, investor were singing the praises of
Active Management in 1970, 1982, 1995, 2004 and
2009 (the Crash Troughs), while they were singing the
praises of Passive in 1976, 1991, 1999, 2007 and 2016
(the Bubble Tops). If we look back over the entire 30year period (my investment career) Active has beaten
Passive (defined as more than 50% of managers
beating the Index I that year) about 60% of the years
(expected when think that market rises about 2/3 of
the time) and while the strings of outperformance are
longer for Passive (average 7 years) and shorter for
Active (average 4 years), the most interesting element
of the performance is that over the whole period
Active beats Passive in generating cumulative gains (it
is just math, avoiding losses helps long-term returns
more than winning in the up years). The very best
managers outperform over the entire period by a
significant margin and when we look at Hedge Fund
performance over the entire period relative to the long
-only Index the margin of victory is almost 2:1 (you
end up with twice as much wealth by limiting the
volatility of performance over time). It turns out that
the old adage is true, if you take care of the losses, the
gains will take care of themselves.
But investors (as a group) don't seem to see the
strategy cyclicality and they continually fall into the
trap of buying what they wish they would have bought
(and selling what they are about to need) and pour
assets into whatever strategy has just had a hot period
(chasing the hot 3-year dot), which explains why the
average investor’s returns are so much lower than the
Indexes (and much, much lower that the best Active
managers and Hedge Funds). Case in point, after the
best five year period in the history of U.S. equity
markets from 1995-1999 (the Tech Bubble), investors
poured a record amount into Index Funds (ETFs
weren’t really a factor then), peaking at a massive $260
billion flow in Q1 2000 (almost to the day of the peak
on 3/24). On the flip side, not only was Active
Management declared dead, but investors actually
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killed off a number of the best Hedge Funds
(including one of the greatest of all time, Tiger
Management) by redeeming en masse. Of course, we
know how that story ended, the next decade, the S&P
500 compounded at (1.7%), while the best Hedge
Funds (like Baupost and others) compounded at 17%.
Active Management and Hedge Funds were declared
dead again in 2007 right at the peak of the Housing
Bubble and the losses for investors who poured into
Passive and Index Funds were even worse this time as
the equity market fell nearly (60%) peak to trough. So
what did people do at the bottom of the Global
Financial Crisis in March of 2009, they actually sold
equities and bought Hedge Funds, just in time for
them to begin their seven year cycle of
underperformance. There has been a lot of press
about how this cycle seems to be much tougher for
Hedge Funds and that observation would be right in
one specific sense, the ability to generate significant
nominal returns has been impacted by the Zero
Interest Rate Policy that has been artificially
suppressing interest rates for the past seven year. We
discuss this in more detail in the Hedge Fund section
in the Q4 Review above, but the short version is when
a manager is long and short, there is a significant
amount of cash that is held as collateral and in the
“old days” a manager would earn 5% on that cash and
the Alpha they generated would be additive. When
rates are at 0%, even with meaningful Alpha
generation it is tougher to make high absolute returns.
So how have investors reacted to the lean seven years
for Active managers and Hedge Funds? They have
begun to vote with their feet. The flow of capital out
of Active Managers (in the Mutual Fund space)
started as a trickle in 2009 and has turned into a
torrent as nearly $1.2T has left the Active Mutual
Funds for Passive Indexes and ETFs over the period
($400 billion to Index Funds and $800 billion to
ETFs). The crescendo was another $260 billion
(history rhymes) going into Vanguard Funds in Q3 of
last year. The surge in Passive has been nothing short
of breathtaking, as the number of ETFs has trebled
since 2009 from 600 to over 1800 and the AUM has
more than trebled from $700 billion to $2.4 trillion.
In fact, today nearly 40% of equity market assets are in
Passive strategies. There is a Reflexivity to this
movement in that the more money that has shifted
has driven up a narrow group of stocks, which has
attracted more capital, which drives up the price even
more, which attracts more capital, and so on… One
big problem is that a reflexive virtuous cycle can turn
into a reflexive vicious cycle when things finally do
turn (they will turn, the economic cycle is not dead)
and the real problem will be that the safety valve
mechanism that Active managers play (they buy the
values at the bottom) will be less robust since there is
less money in Active. If this all sounds circular, you
are hearing it right, because it is circular. The other big
problem is that the rise of Passive has led to the
“Turkey Problem”. The turkey on the farm thinks
they have the greatest life ever as they are constantly
fed, doesn't have any responsibilities other than eating
and resting and getting portly and, in fact they do
have the greatest life ever, for precisely 364 days (day
365 is a downer). The same thing will be true for
investors during #PeakPassive when the day of
reckoning finally arrives.
Take the example of our favorite strategy to poke fun
at “Smart Beta” (and in particular Low-Volatility
Smart Beta). Consider the silliness of the phrase for a
moment. Beta, by definition is “Dumb” (again rules
based) because it IS the market. You either get market
exposure or you don’t. It was amazing marketing, but
a really bad way to invest for the long-term (Alpha is
much better). Worse yet is the absolutely nonsensical
idea of Low-Vol ETFs, where the sole criteria for
buying a stock is the volatility of its price (no
fundamentals, just a line on a chart), when low, buy,
when high, sell. Think about the danger of this
craziness for a minute. When you buy a lot of a stock
(money flows into ETFs) the volatility goes down and
the formula says to buy more, which lowers the Vol,
which triggers the algorithm…lather, rinse, repeat.
What this does is drive stocks like Exxon Mobile
(XOM) to levels of ridiculousness that seemed
impossible only a few short years ago. For more than
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First Quarter 2017
forty years, the industrial conglomerate that is Exxon
Mobile (some think of it as an oil company, but they
have dozens of businesses and as many make less
when oil goes up as make more) traded like an
industrial conglomerate should, between 12X and 15X
earnings (it is a cyclical company so should have a
lower multiple). Every time it got to the high end of
the range the Hedge Funds would short it and when it
got to the low end of the range the Value managers
would buy it. The problem began when these silly
Smart Beta strategies began to buy XOM at any price
(because it had low vol, because they were buying
it…) and today the company sells at 40X earnings.
This might be one of the best shorts we have ever seen
in our career. Not that XOM will crash any time
soon, but you can be short this for the next five years
and use the proceeds to finance a great long and make
Alpha on both sides of the trade. Speaking of
volatility, there is another insidious thing going on
that will make the pain much more acute when the
new Babson’s Break occurs and that is the gigantic
structural short on VIX that has been propagated by
Insurance Companies (using it for Annuities hedging)
and now even being sold to Pension Funds by
(unscrupulous) investment banks as a means of
enhancing the yield of their Funds since they have
chronically underperformed their actuarially assumed
rates. The total net short interest against VIX has
never been higher and when this Alligator Jaws snaps
shut there will be some huge damage done to
investors.
So there must be some reasons to think that the tide
could shift in favor of Active Management and Hedge
Funds in the near term, right? We think so and we
think it happens in 2017. First, equity correlations
(rolling 65-day) have retreated from the highs of 2015
when they were 75% to a new ten-year low of 39%,
and low correlations have always favored Active
Management and stock picking. Second, cross-asset
correlations have finally come down from near record
levels last year, falling from 45% to 20% and this has
historically been associated with strong returns for
tactical allocation (long/short equity and macro hedge
funds). Third, equity sector spreads have widened in
recent months, as there has been more dispersion in
performance as the amount of Fed largesse has slowed
(total QE per month has halved since 2015). Fourth,
capital flows have begun to turn negative for Hedge
Funds (although modest, only $100B out of $3 trillion
last year) and that has been a strong contrarian
indicator for a turnaround in relative Hedge Fund
performance. Fifth, the sizeable inflows into Passive
products (both Indexes and ETFs) have reached a
level that has been associated with poor relative
performance over the next three years. Sixth, Federal
Reserve tightening cycles have historically created an
environment that favors long/short strategies over
long-only strategies. Finally, when the AFC wins the
Super Bowl (as the Patriots just did in spectacular
fashion) the S&P 500 has had a poor year, which
would favor long/short over long-only (the Super
Bowl indicator has been right 40/50 times and while
there are many who would claim it is impossible that
this could be a useful indicator, 80% is a pretty good
stat to bet on).
Speaking of the Super Bowl, one of the things about
the Q4 letter is that we are always writing it during the
weekend of the big game and the event never fails to
provide material for the Letters. We have had
everything from themes for the entire letter, Defense
Wins Championships, to small trivia items like the
Super Bowl Indicator above to anecdotes that support
one of our core investment constructs, like how great
players/investors focus on the next play rather than
the last play. This last point is relevant for our topic
this year, but only as a side note to the primary theme
that Talent Wins (in sports, in life and in investing)
and that a poor period of performance by a hugely
talented athlete (or manager) is precisely when you
want to bet on them (not pull them out of the game).
So let’s set the stage for our theme. The New England
Patriots have been to the Super Bowl more times (9)
than any other team and are tied for second for most
wins (5) (Pittsburgh has won 6). They were the first
team to ever overcome a 10-point deficit to win the
Super Bowl (51 games). They were the only team in
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First Quarter 2017
either the playoffs or the Super Bowl to come back
from being down 19 points after 3 quarters (93
games). They were the first team to overcome having
a pick-six (12 games). They were the first team to win
the Super Bowl in overtime (1 game). So how did a
team trailing 28-3 halfway through the third quarter
come back and win the biggest game in professional
sports? Two words Talent and Leadership. The
Patriots are led by arguably (not very arguable, but
everyone has their favorite) the greatest quarterback
that has every played professional football. Tom
Brady has won more Super Bowls than any other
quarterback in history (5), has been the MVP of the
Super Bowl more times than any other player (4) and
holds eleven Super Bowl records including most
games played (7), most touchdowns (15) and most
yards passing (2,071). Granted, Brady has only the
third highest passer rating in NFL history at 97.2 (the
range is 0 to 158.3), trailing Russell Wilson (99.6) and
Aaron Rogers (104.1), but we can safely say at this
point that his total body of work would make him the
G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) in our book.
For purposes of an analogy, if Tom Brady were an
Investment Manager, he would clearly be a top tier
Hedge Fund, lots of talent, highly compensated and
wins big over the long term. Brady’s opponent for the
Super Bowl was the Falcon’s Matt Ryan. Ryan is a
solid (actually very solid) quarterback whom, after a
slow start to his career, has come on strong in recent
seasons to be ranked only two spots behind Brady on
the all-time passer rating (greater than 1500 attempts)
with a 93.6. But Ryan is only 3-5 in the post-season,
has only been to one Super Bowl and has lost in the
first round of the playoffs three times in his nine
seasons (while Brady has won the AFC Championship
7 of last 16 years). If Ryan were an Investment
Manager, he would be an Index Fund. We will posit
here that the first half of Super Bowl LI was like 2016
in the investment world (great for Index Funds and
bad for Hedge Funds) and that the second half is how
2017 will play out. It would be hard to imagine Tom
Brady having a more miserable first half (like it would
be hard to imagine Hedge Funds having a worse year)
going 15-25 for 179 yards with no touchdowns and an
interception to yield a miserable QB passer rating of
65.2 (interesting factoid is Brady has never scored in
the first quarter of any of his 7 Super Bowls, comes
out a little too hedged?). Right before halftime, Brady
set one of the Super Bowl records he probably wishes
he didn't have, most interceptions (31) in the postseason (bright side have to be in post season a lot to
set it) to put his team down 21-3 going into the locker
room. Ryan on the other hand could not have had a
better first half (literally) as he went 17-23 for 284
yards and two touchdowns (no interceptions) for a
perfect passer rating of 158.3 for the first time in
Super Bowl history. We have a theory on this that
perhaps the adrenalin of being in the biggest game of
his career fueled his other-worldly performance and
was the equivalent of the Central Bank stimulus
injected into the markets after Brexit and the Hopium
injected into the market after the Trump victory
fueled the Indexes. Ryan wasn't done there, he came
out after halftime and drove the length of the field on
his first possession (8 plays in 4 minutes) to put the
Falcons on top 28-3, and viewers all around the world
were changing the channel because this game was
over (Hedge Funds are Dead).
So at that point coach Belichick had to make a
decision. Should he pull Brady (fire the Hedge Funds)
or should he stick to his strategy that has made him
the one of the most successful coaches in history
(most Super Bowl wins (5) and 7 rings overall)? What
would you do? What are many Investment
Committees (CalPERS, NY Common etc.) doing?
Belichick could have panicked and changed his game
plan (and many investors do just that), he could have
complained that the refs weren’t calling holding on
the Falcons defense (like saying the Algos and HFTs
have rigged the game against Hedge Funds), he could
have blamed the receivers who weren’t catching the
passes the way they normally do because some of his
guys were out hurt (Gronkowski), but instead he
stayed calm and called plays that put the ball in the
hand of his best player a record number of time (62
pass attempts). Talent Wins. In the last 27 minutes (8
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First Quarter 2017
minutes in Q3, 15 minutes in Q4 and 4 minutes in
OT) Brady was nearly perfect, engineering two
touchdown drives and two 2-point conversions,
finishing with Super Bowl records completions (43),
attempts (62) and total yards (466). Maybe Hedge
Funds aren’t dead after all. Now there is one thing to
contemplate which is that Defense Still Wins
Championships, because as great as Brady was, had
the Patriots Defense allowed even a field goal over that
stretch, the Falcons would have won. The Patriots D
completely stifled Ryan in the last part of the game
and showed once again that when the markets get
rocky, Index Funds will underperform. We believe we
are on the verge of just such a time (for all the reasons
we have laid out in the other Surprises above) and that
2017 will be the year where Active Management and
Hedge Funds rise up and regain their championship
status in investors’ portfolios. It would be tragic if
investors pulled their MVP QB right before he was
about to go on an epic run. There is another
investment QB that people think is the G.O.A.T. and
his long-term performance is truly Hall of Fame
worthy (19.7% compound return since inception,
more than double the S&P 500), but even he has had
some really poor halves over his career (but taking the
ball out of his hands would have been a mistake).
Warren Buffett was down (50%) over a year
(equivalent of a half in a season of 49 years), not once
but twice over a decade from 2000 to 2010. Berkshire
lost half its value from 1999 to 2000 (when people said
the game (Tech) was passing Buffet by) and again in
2008 to 2009 (when being leveraged long stocks was a
bad idea), but you rarely hear people saying Berkshire
is Dead. It is funny that Buffett had the equivalent of
much worse performance than Brady did in the first
half of the Super Bowl, or that Active Managers or
Hedge Funds had in 2016, but for some reason
investors focus on his long-term performance and
stick with the game plan. Maybe that is a good
strategy for Active Management and Hedge Funds
right now.
We wrote last time that, “Ferris Bueller was right,
“Life moves pretty fast.” A year ago it seemed like
the election would never get here and two weeks ago it
couldn't get here fast enough and now it has been over
for a week it has been a blur of shock, awe, media
frenzy, market gyrations, global discourse, political
posturing and lots and lots of forecasting, predicting
and handicapping what is likely to happen in the
coming months, quarters and years. Our job in the
investment business is to look at all the pertinent
facts, form hypothesis and execute investment
strategies to try and capitalize on opportunities that
we see. Investing is all about taking intelligent risks,
those risks you are compensated correctly for taking.
In order to make decisions on which risks to take, you
must have conviction about your ideas and your
strategies.” We have great conviction that hedged
equity is the best way to gain exposure to the equity
markets over the long term. We have great conviction
that putting capital in the hands of the most talented
portfolio managers is a winning strategy. We have
great conviction that the investment environment is
nearing an important inflection point and that we are
inching ever close to another Babson’s Break where
having a core exposure to hedged equity will be
critical to preserving capital. I was meeting with a
very interesting manager last week (a Tiger GrandCub, spun out of one of the original firms that spun
out of Tiger), they are focused on healthcare and had
a challenging year last year and he said in his recent
letter that when things don't go as expected (like
Hedge Funds in 2016 or Tom Brady in the first half of
Super Bowl LI) there are four possible explanations; 1)
We don't know what we are doing and we never did,
2) We know what we are doing and we stopped
following the play book or lost discipline, 3) We knew
what we were doing, but have lost the edge or 4)
Perhaps there was an aberration in the markets (e.g.
political challenges in healthcare). We think this is a
great summary of what investors must attempt to
discern when outcomes don't meet expectations. We
have great conviction that we (as coach), and our
managers (as players), do indeed know what we are
doing. We have great conviction that while there were
some small lapses in discipline (allowing net exposure
to drift too low) we have stuck to the core of the
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First Quarter 2017
original (and long term successful) play book. We
have great conviction that the team has not lost the
edge and in fact is stronger than ever (we learn from
our mistakes). Therefore, by process of elimination
we are left to conclude that 2016 was an aberration in
the equity markets, a year punctuated by an
anomalous series of events where shorts went up more
than longs and low quality companies outperformed
high quality companies. Looking at the scoreboard,
with 8 minutes left, trailing 28-3, one might be
compelled to pull the QB and change the game plan.
Nothing could be further from our minds and we are
confident that our team will rally like the Patriots
behind Brady and bring home the championship in
2017.
[Update: The first quarter of 2017 started off well for
the home team as the Hedge Fund strategy scored a
touchdown,
rising
around
6%
(something
astonishingly Tom Brady has actually never done in a
Super Bowl) and got the extra point in April to put up
a very solid 7% return]
Update on Morgan Creek
We hope you have been able to join us for our Global
Market Outlook Webinar Series entitled “Around the
World with Yusko.” We have had many interesting
discussions in the last few months including: March
Madness: Fuel to Inflate the Equity Bubble and April
Fools: Hope is not an Investment Strategy. If you
missed one and would like to receive a recording,
please contact a member of our Investor Relations
team at [email protected]. Mark your
calendar now for our May 19th webinar at 1:00pm
EDT.
We are also a proud sponsor of The Investment
Institute, a newly formed Educational Membership
Association for Institutional & Private Investors and
Managers in the Southeast. The date of the next
program will be May 22nd-23rd, 2017 at The Umstead
Hotel & Spa, Cary, NC. For more information on
how to become a member and join this elite group
please visit www.theinvestmentinstitute.org.
As always, It is a great privilege to manage capital on
your behalf and we are appreciative of your long-term
partnership and confidence.
With warmest regards,
Mark W. Yusko
Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer
This document is for informational purposes only, and is neither an offer to sell nor a
solicitation of an offer to buy interests in any security. Neither the Securities and
Exchange Commission nor any State securities administrator has passed on or endorsed the merits of any such offerings, nor is it intended that they will. Morgan
Creek Capital Management, LLC does not warrant the accuracy, adequacy, completeness, timeliness or availability of any information provided by non-Morgan Creek
sources.
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General
This is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of an offer to buy interests in any investment fund managed by Morgan Creek Capital Management, LLC or its
affiliates, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer or solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to
registration or qualification under the laws of such state or jurisdiction. Any such offering can be made only at the time a qualified offeree receives a
Confidential Private Offering Memorandum and other operative documents which contain significant details with respect to risks and should be carefully read.
Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any State securities administrator has passed on or endorsed the merits of any such offerings of these
securities, nor is it intended that they will. This document is for informational purposes only and should not be distributed. Securities distributed through Morgan
Creek Capital Distributors, LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC
Performance Disclosures
There can be no assurance that the investment objectives of any fund managed by Morgan Creek Capital Management, LLC will be achieved or that its historical
performance is indicative of the performance it will achieve in the future.
Forward-Looking Statements
This presentation contains certain statements that may include "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and
Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are "forward-looking
statements." Included among "forward-looking statements" are, among other things, statements about our future outlook on opportunities based upon current
market conditions. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do involve assumptions,
risks and uncertainties, and these expectations may prove to be incorrect. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking
statements as a result of a variety of factors. One should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this
discussion. Other than as required by law, the company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements.
No Warranty
Morgan Creek Capital Management, LLC does not warrant the accuracy, adequacy, completeness, timeliness or availability of any information provided by nonMorgan Creek sources.
Risk Summary
Investment objectives are not projections of expected performance or guarantees of anticipated investment results. Actual performance and results may vary
substantially from the stated objectives with respect to risks. Investments are speculative and are meant for sophisticated investors only. An investor may lose all or
a substantial part of its investment in funds managed by Morgan Creek Capital Management, LLC. There are also substantial restrictions on transfers. Certain of the
underlying investment managers in which the funds managed by Morgan Creek Capital Management, LLC invest may employ leverage (certain Morgan Creek
funds also employ leverage) or short selling, may purchase or sell options or derivatives and may invest in speculative or illiquid securities. Funds of funds have a
number of layers of fees and expenses which may offset profits. This is a brief summary of investment risks. Prospective investors should carefully review the risk
disclosures contained in the funds’ Confidential Private Offering Memoranda.
Indices
The index information is included merely to show the general trends in certain markets in the periods indicated and is not intended to imply that the portfolio of
any fund managed by Morgan Creek Capital Management, LLC was similar to the indices in composition or element of risk. The indices are unmanaged, not
investable, have no expenses and reflect reinvestment of dividends and distributions. Index data is provided for comparative purposes only. A variety of factors
may cause an index to be an inaccurate benchmark for a particular portfolio and the index does not necessarily reflect the actual investment strategy of the
portfolio.
Russell Top 200 Value Index — this measures the performance of the mega-cap value segment of the U.S. equity universe. It includes those Russell Top 200 Index
companies with lower price-to-book ratios and lower expected growth values. Definition is from the Russell Investment Group.
Russell Top 200 Growth Index — this measures the performance of the mega-cap growth segment of the U.S. equity universe. It includes those Russell Top 200
Index companies with higher price-to-book ratios and higher forecasted growth values. Definition is from the Russell Investment Group.
Russell 2000 Value Index — this measures the performance of small-cap value segment of the U.S. equity universe. It includes those Russell 2000 Index companies
with lower price-to-book ratios and lower forecasted growth values. Definition is from the Russell Investment Group.
Russell 2000 Growth Index — this measures the performance of the small-cap growth segment of the U.S. equity universe. It includes those Russell 2000 Index
companies with higher price-to-value ratios and higher forecasted growth value. Definition is from the Russell Investment Group.
Russell Midcap Value — this measures the performance of the mid-cap value segment of the U.S. equity universe. It includes those Russell Midcap Index companies
with lower price-to-book ratios and lower forecasted growth values. Definition is from the Russell Investment Group.
Russell Midcap Growth — this measures the performance of the mid-cap growth segment of the U.S. equity universe. It includes those Russell Midcap Index
companies with higher price-to-book ratios and higher forecasted growth values. Definition is from the Russell Investment Group.
Russell 3000 Index (DRI) — this index measures the performance of the 3,000 largest U.S. companies based on total market capitalization, which represents
approximately 98% of the investable U.S. equity market. Definition is from the Russell Investment Group.
MSCI EAFE Index — this is a free float-adjusted market capitalization index that is designed to measure developed market equity performance, excluding the US &
Canada. Morgan Stanley Capital International definition is from Morgan Stanley.
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MSCI World Index — this is a free float-adjusted market capitalization index that is designed to measure global developed market equity performance. Morgan Stanley
Capital International definition is from Morgan Stanley.
91-Day US T-Bill — short-term U.S. Treasury securities with minimum denominations of $10,000 and a maturity of three months. They are issued at a discount to face
value. Definition is from the Department of Treasury.
HFRX Absolute Return Index — provides investors with exposure to hedge funds that seek stable performance regardless of market conditions. Absolute return
funds tend to be considerably less volatile and correlate less to major market benchmarks than directional funds. Definition is from Hedge Fund Research, Inc.
JP Morgan Global Bond Index — this is a capitalization-weighted index of the total return of the global government bond markets (including the U.S.) including
the effect of currency. Countries and issues are included in the index based on size and liquidity. Definition is from JP Morgan.
Barclays High Yield Bond Index — this index consists of all non-investment grade U.S. and Yankee bonds with a minimum outstanding amount of $100 million and
maturing over one year. Definition is from Barclays.
Barclays Aggregate Bond Index — this is a composite index made up of the Barclays Government/Corporate Bond Index, Mortgage-Backed Securities Index and
Asset-Backed Securities Index, which includes securities that are of investment-grade quality or better, have at least one year to maturity and have an outstanding
par value of at least $100 million. Definition is from Barclays.
S&P 500 Index — this is an index consisting of 500 stocks chosen for market size, liquidity and industry grouping, among other factors. The index is a market-value
weighted index – each stock’s weight in the index is proportionate to its market value. Definition is from Standard and Poor’s.
Barclays Government Credit Bond Index — includes securities in the Government and Corporate Indices. Specifically, the Government Index includes treasuries
and agencies. The Corporate Index includes publicly issued U.S. corporate and Yankee debentures and secured notes that meet specific maturity, liquidity and
quality requirements.
HFRI Emerging Markets Index — this is an Emerging Markets index with a regional investment focus in the following geographic areas: Asia ex-Japan, Russia/
Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East.
HFRI FOF: Diversified Index — invests in a variety of strategies among multiple managers; historical annual return and/or a standard deviation generally similar to
the HFRI Fund of Fund Composite index; demonstrates generally close performance and returns distribution correlation to the HFRI Fund of Fund Composite
Index. A fund in the HFRI FOF Diversified Index tends to show minimal loss in down markets while achieving superior returns in up markets. Definition is from
Hedge Fund Research, Inc.
HFRI Emerging Markets Index — this is an Emerging Markets index with a regional investment focus in the following geographic areas: Asia ex-Japan, Russia/
Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East.
HFRI FOF: Diversified Index — invests in a variety of strategies among multiple managers; historical annual return and/or a standard deviation generally similar to
the HFRI Fund of Fund Composite index; demonstrates generally close performance and returns distribution correlation to the HFRI Fund of Fund Composite
Index. A fund in the HFRI FOF Diversified Index tends to show minimal loss in down markets while achieving superior returns in up markets. Definition is from
Hedge Fund Research, Inc.
MSCI Emerging Markets Index — this is a free float-adjusted market capitalization index that is designed to measure equity market performance in the
global emerging markets. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index consisted of the following 23 emerging market country indices: Brazil, Chile, China,
Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, South Africa,
Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates.
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MORGAN CREEK CAPITAL MANAGEMENT
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